


Revealing The Pain

by entiegon



Series: Nya and Jay explain Skybound [2]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Echo Zane is rescued, F/M, Gen, Jay gets aggressive, Jay is main focus, Jay learns what happened to his parents, Jaya on the side, Kailor on the side, Mention of Death, Mention of attempted suicide, Mention of blood, Mentions of Cancer, Nya is secondary focus, Pixane on the side, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, between seasons 10 and 11, mention of alcoholism, mention of suicidal thoughts, mentions of attempted murder, mentions of electrocution by baby elemental, telling of Season 6: Skybound, the ninja try to find out what is wrong with Jay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 65,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22312180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entiegon/pseuds/entiegon
Summary: When a seemingly ordinary movie night goes horribly wrong, it comes to light that Jay and Nya have been hiding something from their fellow ninja... something big. But what's really concerning is just how terrified Jay is at just trying to explain what that something is. Is it just that the memories are too much, or is there something worse going on?also on fanfiction.net
Relationships: Kai/Skylor (Ninjago), Nya/Jay Walker, P.I.X.A.L./Zane (Ninjago)
Series: Nya and Jay explain Skybound [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600861
Comments: 37
Kudos: 134





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to Inheritance. It can also be seen as a stand alone piece if so desired.

" Master Wu?"

The timid voice easily woke its master from his meditation. The old man looking up at his student with questioning yet kind eyes clearly noticed the fight that Jay seemed to be having within himself. There was something on the blue ninja's mind… and it had been there for a while now.

" What is it Jay?" He asked as gently as he could.

" When… when we need to be told something important that only you can tell us, how do you know that we're ready to hear what it is that you need to tell us?" Jay asked, shifting uncomfortably on the spot in the doorway.

" The questions you ask and the things you do all tell me when you are ready to hear something or not. Why do you ask?"

" Well… remember how I told you about the Djinn Nadakhan and his band of sky pirates?" The old master nodded, urging his student to go on. " Well, Nya and I have been talking and we're not sure if we should tell the others about what happened. I mean, we both know that they're going to be mad at us for keeping something like this a secret from them for so long, but… but at the same time, it was painful for us, too."

" In my experience, Jay, you will know when the time is right to tell the others of this story. Be it a question one of the others asks, a look they give you or even just the way they seem to move, you will know when the time is right to tell them."

" Oh. Uh… thank you, Master. Good night."

" Good night, Jay. And you too, Nya."

The resounding eep from behind the screen door clearly told Wu that he had been right in guessing that his other student was hiding from him, though why, he could not fathom. Perhaps she was trying to stop Jay? Either way, he smiled to himself when he saw Nya's head peep around the corner to bid him good night as well before the two lovers disappeared altogether to return to their sleeping quarters. It was late, after all, and their story was quite an emotional one, if memory served.

They would need to be well rested for when they did, finally, tell the others about what had happened.


	2. Chapter 1

“ Movie night!”

The scream was so loud that it almost shook the foundations of the very monastery that contained the owners of the voices. It was that loud, it startled the old spinjitsu master from his meditation and made the ink spill onto a blank sheet of paper that the resident archaeologist was about to use even as she sighed at the bi-monthly occurrence.

The culprits, however, paid no attention to anything other than the television or the snacks laid out over the coffee table in front of it. Each of the eight teenagers were already in their pyjamas and ready to snuggle into their partners (or blankets) as they clambered for the best spots in the room. And not even the girls could supress their laughter at the antics of the boys trying to get to the movie cabinet first.

“ So, what’s it going to be tonight, boys?” Skylor asked, making herself comfortable on one of the lounges, next to Nya though still leaving enough room for both Kai and Jay to sit.

“ I am hoping it would be somewhat educational.” Pixal said as she took her spot on the second lounge.

“ I highly doubt it’s going to be educational considering who managed to get to the cabinet first.” Her boyfriend, Zane, sighed as he took his place by the female nindroid.

“ Oh?”

“ Okay, okay! I’ve got the best movie!” Kai exclaimed, chosen movie in hand, as he closed the cabinet doors.

Almost instantly, the other three boys dispersed from the area. Jay sulkily made his way to Nya’s side, disappointed at not being able to pick the movie for not only this time but the past five times in a row. Lloyd snuggled into the pile of blankets that he had chucked on the end of the second couch in his mad dash to get to the movie cabinet first. And Cole slumped himself into the only bean bag in the room, snatching the entire chip bowl from the table in the process.

“ It’s got action! And adventure! And I guess a little bit of love as well.” Kai kept going even as he was putting the movie on. “ And I know it will make you laugh.”

“ So what is it?” Nya asked.

“ You’ll see.”

Even as Kai finally took his place beside Skylor, both Nya and Jay dreaded the tone in which he had spoken. And the fact that his eyes lingered dangerously on the blue ninja for just a fraction of a second too long clearly told them that he was up to something.

It wasn’t long before the movie started… though the opening scene was a bit confusing considering it looked like a ruined wedding of some sort. Skylor berated Kai about the movie choice almost instantly, saying something about it not having anything to do with romance. To which her boyfriend quickly defended the movie by saying something about it not being ‘mushie-mushie romance fluff’. He got a few weird looks for that.

Yet, the horror came when one of the characters mentioned but a single word.

“ Pirate?” Jay squeaked. “ Did he just say pirate? Please tell me he did not just say pirate?”

Instantly, Nya’s hand was squeezing his own in a slightly tight but comforting way. She sent a quick glare to her brother before turning her focus on her boyfriend.

“ It’s okay, Jay. It’s just a movie. Don’t let it get to you.” She whispered in his ear.

But it already had… and he knew it. He could already feel the pounding of his heart and he knew that Kai was watching him closely. Lloyd and Cole as well, though he couldn’t actually see them. At least Zane, Pixal and Skylor were trying to watch the movie despite what was going on around them… though he was pretty sure that Zane was keeping an eye on him and his quickly growing panic. Not to mention the pirates on the television screen were not helping to calm him from that panic.

Pretty soon, as the pirate ship on the television came into view, Jay’s mind was lost. He did see a pirate ship come into view, but it was a very different pirate ship. One that was flying high in the sky and not sailing on the open seas. It was a ship that looked nothing like it was supposed to be and more like some weird cross between an ocean vessel and a large CH-47 transporter aircraft or else a rather large Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle, complete with creepy living skeleton and a deck that looked like it could house another, smaller flying ship on it.

And the crew weren’t friendly either. He saw flashes of an evil monkey charging at him from every direction. A weird two-faced man glaring at him from the shadows. He felt the presence of Dogshank right behind him as if ready to squeeze the life from him with her massive fists, and heard the cock of a gun that he was too scared to look around for lest the gun be fired. The vengestone ball and chain clamped tightly around his ankle weighed him down almost as if it was buried deep in his stomach. Worst of all was _his_ voice.

_“ All you have to do is wish it all away.”_

“ I’m not going to say it. I won’t say it.” Jay muttered, trying to get the voice out of his head.

Then Nya was there, in his face and looking quite worried. Her hands were on his shoulders, squeezing him ever so slightly to pull him from his panic attack. Directly behind her, Cole and Zane stood, covering the view from the television and also looking worried. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard someone growling quietly to someone else over to his side. Then again, that could also have been his imagination. He just couldn’t tear his eyes from Nya’s very alive face to check.

“ It’s okay, Jay. It’s okay. I’m here.” She was saying. “ Breathe for me. Breathe slowly. It’s going to be okay.”

Slowly, agonisingly slow, Jay started following her gently orders. The rest of the room came back into focus. Kai was looking at him in a confused and guilty way. Skylor looked like she was about to hit the fire ninja despite the concern she was clearly showing for the blue ninja, but she was skilfully holding back. Pixal and Lloyd were watching his every move, just like everyone else in the room.

“ Come on, Jay. Why don’t we go play a game of cards or something while the others watch this movie? I might be able to get one of the movies you like on my Borgpad that we could watch instead.” Nya said, moving her hands down his arms to his own.

“ No pirates… or djinns.” Jay managed to croak out.

“ I promise. I promise something funny and warm, maybe with robots. I know you like that robot one with the cockroach.”

Jay nodded his head and slowly stood himself up. Nya stepped to the side slightly to give him the room he needed before once more squeezing his hand slightly and leading him out of the room and down the hallway to his bedroom. She didn’t mind how slow they were going, knowing that it was what he needed to get out of there. But she did throw a death glare at her brother as they moved to the door, Kai visibly fearing for his life as she did. Yet neither of the two realised his slow movements was because Jay was starting to limp as if from an old injury.

The others in the lounge room did, however, and their concern only grew.

Cole was the first to speak once Jay had left the room, turning on the master of fire in a similar manner to the way the master of amber had. “ Okay, Kai. What gives putting on a pirate movie? You know Jay doesn’t like pirates anymore.”

“ I thought he would enjoy it like he used to.” Kai growled back. “ I didn’t think he’d start hyperventilating and nearly pass out on us.”

“ You didn’t think at all!”

The look in Kai’s eyes hardened and he tried to look away… only to find himself looking into the sharp amber eyes of his girlfriend. They were questioning him, trying to figure out exactly why he would do something like that, but also dark like they knew the reason behind the choice was not what he had said it was.

He averted his gaze so he was looking down at his lap.

Cole heaved a sigh and looked back at the movie that had been paused. The pirates were all standing around on the deck of the ship, frozen in whatever jobs they were doing. He remembered a time when it was Jay who had suggested dressing up as pirates in order to stop pirates. He had been surprisingly happy about it and often dressed as a pirate during Day of the Departed celebrations.

Then everything changed that one day on the Ninjago Hospital rooftop. Suddenly, Jay stopped watching his pirate movies. He’d stopped wearing his pirate uniform. He looked over his shoulder quite a lot as if sensing something that wasn’t there. Jay’s nightmares got so bad that he would wake the others up with his screams, but he would always deny it and go back to sleep almost immediately. And none of them could count the amount of times they had seen him alone and clearly panicking to the point where only Nya could pull him out of it.

At first the earth ninja just thought it was a phase he was going through with the sudden claim to fame he had gone through and it would only last a few days, maybe a week. But that week became two then three and he remembered that Jay had once hosted a TV show, so it didn’t seem possible that he was acting the way he was because he was suddenly famous.

When the weeks turned into months, everyone got the sense that something was wrong, but they tried not to let Jay know about it in case it only made things worse. Apparently not talking made things worse, though, because everyone noticed their friend slowly beginning to remove himself from their regular days out, choosing instead to clean the temple or even train.

Pretty soon, the months turned into years and Jay got steadily worse. Nya had actually pulled Cole aside and made him swear to keep a close eye on the Master of Lightning while they were searching for Wu. The things he saw and heard when Jay thought he wasn’t looking made his heart shatter. And the ordeal of travelling to the First Realm only seemed to make things even worse. According to Kai and Zane, Jay had indeed gone insane and that severely worried both Cole and Nya when they were told.

But he seemed to perk up when they had gotten back. Jay had even made the Yin Yang Promise to Nya. Things slowly started to go back to normal after that… if one called Jay’s fear of pirates and nightmares and excessive cleaning normal, that is. But then he started punching the mural that had been painted on the monastery wall. He got angry during training to the point where – if he was training alone – he’d send the punching bags flying with his bare fists bloodied from his own attacks. Then he would get a fearful look on his face and retreat to his room where only Nya could convince him to leave.

Now Kai had gone and put on a pirate movie.

And Cole wanted to thump him for it.

“ Let me get this straight,” Skylor almost screamed, her voice breaking into Cole’s thoughts and forcing him to look at her, “ Jay’s been afraid of pirates for years and doing things that he wouldn’t normally do, and none of you have bothered to see what’s wrong?”

Apparently, Cole had missed a few things while he’d been off in his own little world. But he didn’t have time to think too much on it before he noticed Kai shaking his head and Lloyd and Zane looking at each other with concern.

“ We have tried, Sky.” The Fire Master was saying. “ He just never wants to talk about it and usually leaves the room to either go outside to do whatever or else go and hide in his bedroom.”

“ He still tinkers with things but the one time I saw him actually build something recently, it looked like some kind of weird flying ship.” Lloyd added, concern deep in his words. “When he realised what he had built, he freaked out hard, destroyed it with his lightning and ran off, leaving the thing burning slightly. I had to put it out so it didn’t catch anything else on fire, then had to explain to Nya what I was doing in the workroom. Next thing I knew, she was gone too.”

“ Perhaps he suffered some form of trauma.” Pixal stated, a curious look on her features.

“ When?” Kai asked. “ I clearly remember him being fine when we went to visit that kid who broke both his legs in the hospital. Then we walk onto the roof of the hospital and suddenly he’s not. Suddenly my sister can do Airjitsu perfectly and her boyfriend is terrified of pirates. Did I mention that they seemed to get back together in that time frame as well?”

“ Pixal may be right.” Zane said calmly despite the worried look on his face. “ The symptoms Jay is showing clearly indicate that he has developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And the fact that those symptoms have been going on for years only seems to cement our theory.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to any of them that one of their own could potentially become ill from their daily, life-threatening job. Lloyd looked like he was trying to figure out what this disorder was and possibly already trying to figure out what he could do to help his friend recover. Kai had a hardened but equally worried look on his face as he turned to face Skylor, quietly seeking help from her. But she had no idea herself and could only sit beside her boyfriend and seek his hand, which he gladly accepted.

Cole heaved a sigh as he completed his unknowing search of the room. Movie night had clearly been ruined, but he didn’t really care about that. He cared only for the wellbeing of his friend. Finally, he made a move towards the door.

“ I’m going to see if my friend’s alright.” He said when he felt all eyes turn to him.

“ I’ll go, too.” Kai said, jumping up. “ I need to… apologise… I guess.”

“ No. I think I should go alone. He might not be up for all of us at once.”

Kai sat back down, realising that his brother was right. Too many people piecing together a possible reason for his strangeness could very well upset Jay even more. And no one wanted that. Cole merely took it as a sign that he could leave without further interruption.

Quietly, the master of earth walked down the hallway heading towards the bedrooms.

If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear Zane and Pixal trying to explain what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was to Lloyd. If he strained, he could hear Kai still trying to figure out how Jay could have become so mentally ill and Skylor trying to reassure him that they’d find a way to help him through his problems. But his mind was focused solely on the task at hand; getting to Jay’s room and seeing if he was going to be okay.

He made it to the turn in the hallway that led to his, Kai’s and Jay’s bedrooms when he heard Jay’s voice.

“ Someone’s coming.” Jay sounded fearful, easily making Cole wonder exactly what had happened to his best friend.

“ Jay, it’s okay. It’s probably just one of the guys. Cole’s and Kai’s bedrooms are also along here, don’t forget.” Nya’s voice soothed.

“ Or it could be Nadakhan and his crew coming to capture you again. I won’t let them capture you again, Nya. I won’t!”

“ Do you really think a pirate would be that quiet while trying to kidnap someone?”

“ Can you not say that word!”

“ Don’t snap at me!”

Jay must have realised what he’d done because he instantly went silent. The next things Cole heard were muffled sobs of apology and Nya’s soothing voice trying to calm them down. Judging by that reaction, Jay was obviously not okay.

Cole had reached his own door by this time, but he was starting to question whether or not he should continue on to Jay’s door. The fact that his feet didn’t want to move from the spot that they’d planted themselves in probably didn’t help in the matter either. And the exchange between the couple was, to be honest, a little unsettling.

But it got him thinking. Maybe Zane and Pixal were right and Jay really was ill. If that was the case, what could he do to help.

“ I think it’s time we told them, Jay.” Nya’s voice said softly, somehow managing to break though Cole’s thoughts despite how muffled it was thanks, in part, to the barrier between them.

“ What!” Jay’s squeaky reply, however, was not muffled.

“ Do you remember what Master Wu said, Jay? Two weeks ago? When we all got back from the villa after finally managing to get Lloyd out of there?”

Cole remembered that day. It was the day that Jay had gone to claim his inheritance… and the day that everyone all thought he had been captured when the truth was he had accidentally set off the tracker device he had on him and so sent the others into a panic thinking that he was in trouble. Lloyd had been so starstruck (despite the fact that he denied it) that he had wanted to bring the giant Fritz Donnegan animatronic home with him, which was quickly vetoed by everyone… especially Jay.

“ I remember that!” Jay sounded happy and even gave a little laugh at the memory. “ I still can’t believe he wanted to bring that thing home with him. I swear it would have driven me insane within the first day if he had.”

“ Same.” Nya admitted. “ But do you remember what Wu said?”

Jay fell silent.

Nya continued almost without skipping a beat. “ He said that we would know when the time was right. He said that the others would give us a clue as to when they were ready to be told. It could be anything from a simple question to something they do. And I think that that movie was Kai’s way of telling us that he wants to know what’s going on.”

More silence.

Cole started wondering if he should leave before he was caught.

Nya sighed, trying to get through to Jay. “ You said it yourself two weeks ago, Jay. You were thinking that we should tell the others about Nadakhan. Well, I think now’s the time. Kai’s clearly suspicious about everything-”

“ Exactly! He’s suspicious about everything. _Everything_!” Jay cut it.

“ That’s not what I meant and you know it. He’s only acting like this because he knows that something’s going on and he wants to know what that is. He can see that something’s troubling you. They all can. It’s getting to the point where it’s kind of hard to miss.”

“ What else do you want me to do, Nya?” Jay pleaded almost desperately. “ I talk with Master Wu in a counselling session once a week and meditate with him twice a day more than everyone else. He’s also got me on solo training and willingly lets me play video games until I literally have to be dragged away from the television. Not to mention he only lets me snack on junk when I’m playing said video games. I swear he’s somehow programmed Zane into giving me only healthy meals every waking moment of my life. He’s got me on medication, Nya!”

 _What? Jay was on medication?_ Cole thought, looking at the blue ninja’s door with an ever more worried look on his face.

“ I know, Jay.” The water ninja sounded tired. “ But another thing you can do is talk about it. Tell the others what’s happened and let them help you. You’ll feel better for it. Cole might be able to help you by drawing with you, Zane could help you in the kitchen to make delicious meals, Kai might be able to help you focus on your training and Lloyd with your video games or something. But we need to tell them about what happened first.”

“ Not now, Nya.”

“ Tomorrow then. We’ll tell them tomorrow.”

“ No, Nya.”

“ Jay, we need to. The more we keep this bottled up, the more it’s going to eat at us. We need to let the others know. And we’re going to, at least, start tomorrow.”

“ I think… I think I need to be alone now.” Jay sighed.

Cole heard Nya get up and start towards the door, his own eyes going wide as he realised that she was leaving Jay’s room. He barely had time to register her reply as he almost ripped his door open and ducked into his dark room. He even wished that he was still a ghost. That would definitely be helpful right about now.

But, as it was, he had left his door open just the slightest bit as he tried to escape and so Nya clearly noticed as she made her way back to the lounge room. And the fact that neither Nya nor Jay had heard anyone leave the hallway probably didn’t help his cause either. So Cole was not expecting when Nya tore open his door with a glare fiercer than any she had sent Kai that night, grabbed his wrist with an iron-like grip, and dragged him all the way to her own room where she promptly threw him inside and shut the door, blocking any chance of escape.


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you all know, I don't own ninjago or the breakfast club or Wall-E or Pirates of the Caribbean. forgot to add those last two movies in the last chapter.

Cole looked like a deer caught in a truck’s headlights under Nya’s fierce gaze. He knew he was in trouble. Deep trouble if that almost murderous gaze had anything to say about it. He couldn’t even move he was that petrified of the water ninja.

“ How much of that did you hear?” She asked, her voice low.

“ I-I-I was just… I-I didn’t mean to…” Cole stuttered, trying to look away but finding he couldn’t.

“ How much did you hear, Cole?”

“ Jay heard me coming down the hallway. I was just going to make sure that he was okay. I didn’t mean to overhear anything. It just happened. I just froze. I’m sorry.”

Nya took a deep breath in and slowly let it out, massaging her forehead in the process. She didn’t know what to do. She had told Jay that they would tell the others about Nadakhan tomorrow, and she planned on doing exactly that regardless of Jay’s attempts to not talk. Even if she did most of the talking, she also wanted him to be there when she did tell the others because she knew that it would help him in the long run.

But here was Cole, standing in front of her, looking like he had woken an entire den of sleeping dragons. He had seen Jay’s reaction to the pirate movie and had gone in search of his friend to see if he was alright… only to accidentally overhear about Nadakhan and what that friend now has to do in order to combat what Nadakhan had done to him.

And then there were the suspicions that she knew Kai, at least, had. That was why her brother had put on that stupid movie, after all. In his own way, he was trying to figure out what was wrong with Jay, trying to help him be who he was before. But he was going about it all wrong. And he was poking and prodding at a dangerous beast as he was doing it.

Lloyd, Zane and Pixal were all clearly concerned, though the levels of their concern varied between the three of them. And Nya wasn’t exactly sure where she stood with any of them. Though, if she knew Zane and Pixal, they had probably figured out exactly what was going on quite quickly.

So, what did she say now? Did she tell Cole what was going on and have him worry even more about Jay? Did she tell the others and have them worry, too? She was going to have to go off at Kai for what he did, that she wasn’t going to let go. But how should she start with unravelling this mess? Because that’s what it was – a mess.

“ He’s got PTSD, hasn’t he?” Cole’s voice pulled Nya from her thoughts.

She looked up, confused.

“ Jay. He’s got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, hasn’t he?”

“ Yes.” The word came out more as a sigh than anything else.

“ When did it happen? When did he find out? Why him?”

“ When it happened and why he’s got it is a story I want to try and start telling tomorrow with Jay around. But we found out not long after the battle with Krux and Acronix. It was before we spilt up in search of Master Wu. He came to me, we went to his parents, and then we all went to the doctor. That’s why I asked you to watch over him like a hawk as soon as we were paired off. He had to know we still cared and were still going to watch out for him and be there for him even if we had other things we had to do. That’s why I called him whenever I could. But how did you…?”

“ Pixal and Zane. They figured he’s gone through some traumatic stuff because he’s been showing signs of PTSD. They were explaining what it was to Lloyd when I left the lounge room.”

Nya nodded.

At least now she was sure that the others suspected that something was going on. Unfortunately, that left her with another issue. Should she tell them or see if Jay wanted to tell them? Another option was to get permission from Jay to tell them… which she hadn’t gotten when she told Cole because Cole pretty much figured it out himself.

Oh man, she was in trouble.

On one hand, Jay was going to kill her for telling anyone about his post-traumatic stress. But on the other hand, Jay needed the help badly. He was starting to get worse. Either his medications weren’t working any more or he wasn’t taking them because he was starting to sink into depression. He was spending more time in the bathroom, starting to lose interest in his tinkering now and he was starting to get aggressive… and that’s what really scared Nya.

She almost forgot that Cole was in the room with her until she felt his hands on her shoulders, guiding her to her bed so that she could sit down.

“ Hey, if you want me to keep quiet about all this, I will.” He said, noticing how stressed she was becoming.

“ No. You need to know. You all need to know.” Nya replied. “ Cole… he’s getting worse.”

Cole remained quiet, knowing that Nya needed to talk.

“ I just… I don’t know what to do. He’s going to get so mad at me for telling you guys about his PTSD, but you also need to know. I mean, what if something happens and he ends up becoming a liability during a mission or something. No one wants that, but I’m afraid that if he keeps getting worse like this, then that’s what’s going to happen.”

“ I could tell them.” Cole offered.

“ And then we’d both get in trouble.” Nya gave another sigh before standing up, a determined look now on her face. “ No, I think it would be best if I tell the others. He shouldn’t get too angry with me.”

Before either of them could say anymore, Nya opened her door and started back towards the lounge room. All Cole could do was follow her down the hallway, not sure what was going to happen but also knowing that Nya was about to tell the others of Jay’s predicament… and probably yell at Kai for putting on a pirate movie. He just didn’t expect Nya to stop at the hallway leading to Jay’s bedroom. How he managed to not run into her, he had no idea. But, somehow, he managed to dance around her to avoid knocking her to the ground.

“ Nya?” He asked once he had steadied himself.

“ Maybe I should ask, just to be on the safe side.” She replied, obviously thinking aloud.

Without another word, Nya started down the hallway only stopping when she got to Jay’s door. Cole waited, watching as she poked her head into the room, not sure if he should wait for her or continue on to the lounge room.

Thinking on it, he hoped the others hadn’t moved from the lounge room. It would save a lot of hassle if they had stayed. Though Cole was more than sure that Kai would have wanted to get out of there before Nya returned and started yelling at him. Whether he took Skylor with him would be a different story, however.

He was about to start heading back to the lounge room to check that everyone was still there when Nya returned. Her eyes were downcast and slightly disappointed at the outcome of her mini mission, but Cole could also see determination hiding within them. Whatever had happened, she was still going to tell the others about Jay.

Yet there was silence between the two as they continued on their way.

When they finally reached their destination, they found that no one had left the room just yet… though Kai did look like he was about ready to go hunting for the Master of Earth. Skylor was trying to talk him out of going, though neither Cole nor Nya could tell if it was working or not. Over on the other couch, Lloyd was still talking with Zane and Pixal about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder… though it seemed to have grown into a full-blown conversation about it.

No one expected Nya to storm over to Kai the second she noticed that he was still in the room. Or her voice to echo dangerously through the room either.

“ How could you be so stupid Kai!” She growled, poking her brother’s chest roughly. Skylor immediately stepped away from the siblings as Kai’s fearful look returned to his face. “ You know Jay’s afraid of pirates! You’ve known that for years! So, what do you do? You go and put on a pirate movie!”

“ I thought he’d enjoy it!” Kai defended.

“ You did not! I saw that look you gave him. You wanted to try and pry out why he’s been avoiding pirates, why he’s been avoiding spending time with you, with all of you. I know you better than that, Kai.”

“ Can you blame me? One minute, Jay’s being his usual happy, slightly weird, motor-mouth self. The next, he’s stopped enjoying things he used to love and started skulking around the place like he’s afraid of his own shadow. Of course, I’m going to try and figure out what’s going on. And with him not talking to anyone about it, I had to do something!”

“ You didn’t have to go and do that! If anything, you’ve probably made it worse by going straight into _those_ movies.”

“ That’s just it, Nya. What have I made worse?” Now Kai was really starting to growl, almost standing over his sister in his growing annoyance.

That’s when Nya backed down. She knew this was going to come up, but she didn’t realise that her anger would wane as quickly as it had flared at the sight of her brother. Now her uncertainty was starting to take over again as her thoughts began to race.

Kai looked down on her – his own anger beginning to dissipate at the sight – and he could easily see the pain that she was hiding in her eyes. It was something that he knew the other ninja wouldn’t be able to see as readily thanks to the fact that, not only was he her brother, but also because of the many years he had spent as her caregiver. He unconsciously took a step back when he noticed this, attempting to give Nya some space to help her think.

“ Jay’s got Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Nya finally replied after a few tense minutes and a deep breath on her part.

“ From what? What happened to him to make us almost lose him like this?” Kai asked in an almost pleading manner.

“ We’re not going to lose him, Kai.”

“ Not if you tell us what’s going on so we can make sure we don’t.”

“ I can’t tell you now.”

“ What do you mean you can’t tell us?”

Cole went to stand between the siblings, sensing Kai getting angry again, but Nya stopped him with a pointed look.

“ I won’t say anything more until he’s here.” She stated, turning back to face Kai.

“ And yet you tell us he’s got PTSD. I know you’re keeping secrets from us, Nya, keeping secrets from me.”

Nya could feel her own anger returning to her. “ And I said that I’ll explain it in more detail when Jay is with me. It’s something that both of us have to share and that he needs to hear again.”

“ It has to do with pirates, doesn’t it.”

Nya’s eyes grew wide as a third voice swiftly interrupted the sibling’s dispute and her head whipped around the room, her eyes searching for who had spoken. Not surprisingly, it was Lloyd. He had that look on his face that clearly said he was starting to piece things together. And those things were not meant to be put together yet.

Unfortunately, Nya’s silent panic on the matter gave everyone the clear answer of ‘yes’.

Zane cocked his head to the side in confusion. “ But the only pirates I remember facing were Captain Soto and his crew, and they did barely anything to warrant such a strong fear towards all things pirate.”

“ It wasn’t Captain Soto… though I think he was there at one point.” Nya sighed.

“ Then who was it?” Lloyd asked.

“ Tomorrow. I’ll start explaining it tomorrow when Jay is here.”

“ Why tomorrow? Why not now?” Kai grumbled, clearly getting annoyed by the whole ordeal.

“ I just told you! I want to tell the story with Jay around! You’re just going to have to wait a little bit longer. And please don’t push Jay about it, either. The story will take however long Jay needs to tell it.”

Kai let out an exasperated sigh he didn’t realise he was holding. He wanted to find out what was wrong with his brother now so he could get on to trying to fix the problem sooner rather than later. He did not want to wait around until the time where Jay decided he would grace them all with story time… or until something even worse happened to him.

But he also knew that Nya was right and that he would have to have patience around the lightning master if he did have PTSD. Otherwise they may no longer have a blue clad lightning ninja for a brother anymore. And that was something he really didn’t want to think about.

“ Fine. Tomorrow.” He gave a resigned sigh, taking in his sister’s faint smile as it crossed her lips at his words. Turning to Skylor, he gave her a warm smile and took her hand in his before he started leading her out of the room. “ We’re going to call it a night. Movie night was a bust anyway.”

“ Hey, no funny business.” Cole ordered with a smirk starting to form on his lips. “ I want to be able to get some sleep tonight.”

Kai went as red as the pyjamas he wore, and incoherent words spluttered out of his mouth at the implications to what Cole had said. Even the master of amber was blushing. But before anyone could say anything, the two had disappeared from sight, Skylor’s soft chuckles echoing down the hallway as they escaped.

“ Cole, that was horrible.” Nya reprimanded even as Lloyd worked to stifle a laugh and Zane and Pixal turned to each other, not sure what to do.

“ Hey, none of you have to sleep in the room next door to them tonight.” Cole replied, turning to the abandoned food on the table. “ I don’t see why Kai won’t let his girlfriend stay in the guest room.”

“ He’s just showing his softer side.”

“ Yeah, okay.”

The earth ninja then proceeded to stuff a handful of forgotten chips into his mouth as he eyed the still paused pirate movie. Kai may have thought that movie night was a bust, but maybe they could still make something out of the night. Maybe watch a different movie? Definitely eat the food (First Spinjitsu Master forbid the food go to waste).

“ You guys want to watch a different movie?” He asked after a few minutes.

“ What do you have in mind?” Zane asked, going over to the DVD player and removing Kai’s movie choice.

“ ‘The Breakfast Club’.”

“ What’s that about?” Lloyd turned to face the black ninja as Zane almost eagerly went to switch movies.

It was Nya who replied, also eager to watch the movie. “ It’s about five teens from different high school cliques that have Saturday detention together and learn that they’re more similar than they first thought.”

“ It’s an oldie, but a goodie.” Cole added.

“ Just don’t go doing some of the stuff in the movie.” Nya continued as if Cole hadn’t had spoken. “ Times have changed and it’s not good for you to be smoking stuff.”

“ What?” The confusion was clear on Lloyd’s face.

“ You’ll understand when you watch the movie.”


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m one of the people who believe that if it’s canon, it must be mentioned when necessary. And I have found that the Lego Ninjago Dark Island Trilogy and the ‘live’ play Ninjago: The Realm of Shadows are canon to the Ninjago series along with the Day of the Departed special, so I have mentioned them in this chapter. Just thought I’d mention that.
> 
> Also, I just want to know if I’m managing to keep everyone in character considering the circumstances. Please tell me what you think.

Cole trudged into the kitchen the next morning, stifling a tear-jerking yawn and rubbing furiously at his eyes to try and wake himself up. He had gotten barely any sleep at all the night before, and surprisingly it wasn’t because of Kai and Skylor. They had been rather peaceful throughout the night despite the odd moan the earth master tried not to think about.

No, Cole’s sleep trouble mainly came from himself. He had gotten to bed fine after the movie, but within an hour of falling asleep, his eyes shot open for no apparent reason. He tossed and turned, even knocked his blankets off the bed, but nothing seemed to settle him. And if he did manage to close his eyes, within the hour he’d be awake again. Not even getting up to go to the bathroom or to go to the kitchen to get a drink could help.

For the life of him, he could not get to sleep.

But, apparently, he was the last to enter the kitchen that morning. The others were all sitting around the table; Nya next to Jay, Zane and Pixal together, Lloyd on the other side of Pixal, and Skylor taking Kai’s usual spot. Kai was preparing breakfast, but an almost devilish grin spread across his face at the sight of his friend.

“ Finally decided to join us, Cole.” He smirked.

Cole could only groan as he plumped himself down in the seat beside Zane. He could barely keep his eyes open but, somehow, he managed to focus on the area just in front of him. It was where he usually placed his mug of coffee though there was no mug sitting there, waiting for him. He almost smacked his head into the table when he realised that he had gone straight to the table instead of making his way to the kettle like he usually did.

“ Are you alright, Cole?” Skylor asked, never having seen the earth ninja like this before.

Somehow Cole managed to get an intelligible reply out of his mouth. “ Need coffee.”

The sound of Kai’s laughter rang in Cole’s ears like a gong and this time he did put his head on the table.

“ Here you go, Sleeping Beauty.” The master of fire called out, making Cole lift his head to glare at the nickname he had been given.

In response to the glare, Kai placed Cole’s black dragon mug and a bowl of porridge in front of him before returning to the kitchen, possibly for his own meal. Cole looked at the porridge like he was still trying to figure out what it was before taking his mug in hand and bringing it closer to him. Black coffee steamed within its confines and Cole hastily downed the lot, not caring as it scalded the back of his throat as it went down.

“ Woah, Cole. Take it easy.” Lloyd called from the other end of the table.

Cole ignored him as he got up to get more coffee, stumbling slightly as yet another yawn raked through his body.

“ Did you get any sleep at all last night, Cole?” Zane asked.

It took a few minutes for Cole to give a reply, making sure he had a new cup of coffee in hand before returning to his bowl of porridge.

“ Barely.” He managed to get out before finally starting to eat his breakfast.

“ We didn’t keep you up, did we?” Skylor asked, receiving a shake of the head as a reply.

“ Did you eat too much food while watching ‘The Breakfast Club’?” Pixal asked, receiving a glare for even suggesting such a thing.

“ Wait. You watched ‘The Breakfast Club’ last night? Without us?” Kai asked having just sat down himself and was starting to eat.

Cole turned his glare back to Kai, this time managing to get more than a few words out of his mouth. “ You said Movie Night was a bust. I wasn’t ready to call in for the night.”

“ Plus there was still food on the table.” Lloyd added with a smirk.

The black ninja held his hand out to the younger boy, clearly indicating that the food had also been a factor of his choice.

“ But that still doesn’t make up for you not getting a proper night’s rest.” Zane said, trying to understand how his friend could be so tired despite still going to bed at a reasonable hour.

Cole’s eyes landed on Jay’s, tired brown almost black meeting timid blue across the table. Jay was almost pleading him not to tell the others what had happened during the night… another reason why Cole couldn’t get to sleep.

* * *

_A sigh escaped Cole’s lips as his eyes snapped open for what felt like the hundredth time that night. He turned onto his other side and looked up at the digital clock that rested on his bedside table. 3:00 blinked at him in bright red numbers, forcing a groan from the master of earth. For the past five hours, he had gotten next to no sleep at all… and he probably wouldn’t get any in the next three either._

_He fell onto his back and stared up at his dark ceiling. If he did somehow manage to get some sleep within the next three hours and someone decided to wake him up with a gong, he was definitely going to thump them for waking him. Even if that person happened to be Master Wu._

_But something seemed off this time. It was almost like someone had woken him instead of him waking himself up… like someone was in trouble. Cole strained his ears as he sat himself up. Nothing from Kai’s room (the two lovebirds must have finally fallen asleep). But he was sure he could hear whimpering coming from behind him._

_And behind him was Jay’s room._

_In an instant, Cole was on his feet and out of his room. But he hesitated a little when he got to Jay’s door. He knew he had to calm himself down before he even opened the door, but if Jay was having a nightmare that Nya was better suited to handling…_

_Cole shook his head. There was no time for thoughts like that. It didn’t matter what was the cause of the nightmare, anyway. Jay needed him. And if it was a PTSD dream then him coming to help would, hopefully, show that he and the others were willing to help him with other problems as well._

_Quietly, so as not to startle the lightning master, Cole opened the door. Jay sprang up to a sitting position just as he did so, his blue eyes wide in horror and his breath coming in quick gasps. Even from this distance and in the darkness, Cole could tell that he was sweating._

_“ Jay?” He called gently, noticing the panicked movement of Jay’s head as his eyes landed on the figure in his doorway. “ Are you alright?”_

_Quietly, he moved into the room, stopping only once he had reached the edge of Jay’s bed. But he moved in such a way that he almost felt like he was dealing with a semi-wild animal despite knowing that he wasn’t._

_“ Pirate?” Jay whispered as if to himself._

_“ No, Jay. It’s me, Cole. There are no pirates here.”_

_“ Cole?”_

_“ Yeah, man. I’m right here.”_

_“ Then where…?” Jay looked around the room, his eyes focussing on the darkened furniture that surrounded them. Still not seeing clearly, he hurried to turn on the lamp that was by his bedside, before looking around the room again. His right hand subconsciously reached down to his right ankle to gently rub at a ghost wound as he returned his body into its previous pose. “ The monastery. Not the_ Misfortune’s Keep _.”_

 _Cole had no idea what the_ Misfortune’s Keep _was, but he didn’t like the way Jay said the name. And, for some reason, it was sending a cold chill down his own spine. But whatever meaning the place had for him was almost instantly thrown to the back of his mind. He could question it later. Right now, he had to focus on Jay._

_“ You’re safe, Jay.” He said, instead, placing a hand warily on his friend’s shoulder._

_Jay flinched at the touch despite knowing it was Cole who stood beside him, but he almost as quickly managed to relax himself into it. With Cole there, he knew there was no danger around. But his actions still didn’t help the concern from etching its way back into the earth ninja’s mind._

_In fact, Cole wanted to know who had turned his best friend against himself so that he could hunt them down and slam his hammer into their face… or faces. If there was more than one pirate responsible for whatever pain Jay felt, then he would gladly teach them all a lesson. And something told him that the other ninja wouldn’t be too far behind him with possibly Nya leading the charge._

_“ You’re safe.” The master of earth repeated, hoping his whisper portrayed the strength and determination he spoke his words with. “ And no pirate is ever going to get between you and me or any of the others, got it? We’re more than just a team, Jay. We’re family. And no one’s going to get my little brother if I can help it.”_

_“ Even if that little brother is sick? Or weak? Or afraid?” Jay’s voice quivered as he spoke, portraying just how scared he was at that time._

_“ Especially if that little brother is sick, weak or afraid.” For emphasis, Cole placed his arms fully around Jay’s shaking shoulders and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “ We’ll never leave you.”_

_They remained like that for a few minutes, Cole even moving to sit on the edge of the bed whilst somehow still keeping an ear out to the rest of the still sleeping monastery in case someone else had woken up. Still, Jay took comfort in his friend being by his side, despite the small part of his brain that still feared that Cole would be taken away from him in any second. And, no matter how hard he tried to banish the fear, he still felt like he was being watched. Without realising, tears fell, unbidden, down his face as the memories of the nightmare flooded back to his mind._

_Cole just continued to soothe and comfort his friend, making sure that Jay knew that he was safe and that no one was going to come after him, kidnap him, take him away from his family. And when Jay started voicing his fears about pirates taking the others, Cole made sure to smash those fears as well._

* * *

Eventually, Jay had managed to fall asleep, leaving Cole the only one awake once more. After making sure that the lightning ninja was safely tucked back in his bed and turning off the light, he had gone back to his room with a lot more questions buzzing around in his head than he had answers for.

But one thing was clear. He wasn’t going to reveal his friend’s most recent breakdown to the others. At least, not unless Jay wanted him to. So, to quell the fear that he could clearly see starting to form in Jay’s eyes, Cole managed a small smile before returning to his coffee and porridge.

“ So…” Kai started slowly, breaking Cole from his thoughts. “ Story time.”

“ S-story time?” Jay squeaked, not knowing what the fire master was talking about but at the same time not liking where this was going.

“ Yeah, story time. We’ve got the whole day. Master Wu’s not going to bother us, and we’ve got no training. Might as well get it over and done with.”

“ I think we can afford to let everyone at least wake up properly, first.” Nya said, glaring at her brother.

Kai glared back, not liking the idea of waiting any longer than he had to. He wanted to understand what was going on now so that he could figure out a way to help Jay. Unfortunately, the blue ninja – who was literally caught in the middle of this stare down along with Skylor – had no idea what anyone was talking about and it clearly showed on his face. And his confusion only grew as he looked between the siblings, trying to work out what was going on.

“ Am I missing something?” the blue ninja asked, his eyes finally landing on Nya.

Instantly, Nya’s expression changed to one of guilt. Kai turning his gaze to Jay, though it was now filled with contained worry. Even the others around the table turned to face Jay with their own worried expressions, trying to assess his reaction to what was surely going to be a confession from his girlfriend. And all the while, Jay’s uncomfortable feeling only grew in the pit of his stomach.

Just looking at the expressions on his friend’s faces somehow brought forth the memories of the recent talks he had had with Nya. Talks about revealing everything about Nadakhan and the sky pirates to them… and, more recently, the negative reactions that he had towards certain things that Nya had said to him.

The instant Nya saw Jay’s eyes spark dangerously as if channelling his element, she knew that she was in trouble. But even as his eyes locked with hers, she couldn’t force herself to look away.

“ What did you tell them?” Jay asked, his voice uncharacteristically dark.

“ I only confirmed what they already knew.” Nya replied, honestly. “ When I went back to the lounge room, I found the others talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Kai and I had an argument and then it just came out that you had it. I was going to ask you if it was okay to tell them at least that, but you had already gone to bed.”

It was the truth, all of it. But Cole noticed that Nya had purposefully left out the fact that she had essentially found him listening in to their conversation and had sort of tried to tell him off about it. Sort of, because she had started panicking about something and he had guessed what was going on himself, which prompted her to explain things.

“ You didn’t tell them about… _him?”_ Jay asked.

“ No.” the water ninja replied. “ Jay, I meant what I said when I said that _we_ should tell them. Not just me, not just you. Both of us. Together. And I meant what I said when I said that we should start telling them today.”

Jay looked down at his forgotten bowl of porridge, suddenly not very hungry.

“ It’s time, Jay.” Nya’s voice was barely a whisper. “ They need to know.”

“ I need to see Master Wu.” Jay said after a few silent moments had passed, standing up and refusing to look at anyone else in the room.

Seven faces watched him slowly make his way out of the room, concern and worry clearly etched into them like tattoos on skin. Each one wanted to say something to try and help the blue ninja, yet no words seemed to form on their tongues. It was Kai who managed to break the silence that surrounded them all.

“ You… can’t do that Jay.” He called out, already hating how concerned his voice sounded. “ Master Wu gave us the day off because he’s not here. He woke me and Skylor up at like five o’clock to let us know that he and Misako were going to be gone for the day doing some research or something and that I was to make breakfast… though I think he was just checking on us to make sure we hadn’t done anything stupid. He also said to tell you he would talk with you tomorrow instead. He didn’t say what about though.”

Jay stopped dead in the doorway as Kai’s words reached his ears. His back was to the rest of the room, but those around the table could easy see the tension running through his muscles as they stiffened at the discovery. None of them noticed how pale he had become at the words.

Not having Master Wu in the monastery meant that the others had all day to pry information from him that he didn’t want them to know about… and that was despite the fact that he really didn’t want to start talking about it now of all times. He wanted to be able to talk to his master about it all first.

It also didn’t help that that was how all the trouble with Nadakhan had started… well, besides Clouse being the idiot that he was and unleashing the stupid djinn that is. Both Wu and Misako were the first to have been captured by the creep; Wu actually doing research when he had been captured. So maybe it was a good thing that Misako and Master Wu were doing research together – they could both watch out for each other in case something bad happened.

Somehow, Jay found himself back at the table a few minutes later. He had no idea how he got there or who was beside him with their hand on his shoulder, but he was pretty sure he was back in his seat at the table. A glass of water was placed in front of him with someone’s muffled voice accompanying it in his ear. His mouth moved of its own accord and he could just make out someone saying something about something starting and then everything started to tilt… or, at least, that’s what it felt like.

“ Jay, are you feeling alright?” someone’s voice managed to penetrate the weird haze that was shrouding the master of lightning’s mind.

“ It’s how it started.” Jay heard himself repeat.

“ How did what start?” The sure sound of Skylor’s voice asked.

Finally, Jay looked up from staring at the glass of water in front of him. As he had guessed, he was back in his seat at the table with Nya to his right and Skylor to his left. It was Nya’s hand that was resting on his shoulder, though he still wasn’t sure who it was who had managed to penetrate the haze that was only just beginning to clear from his mind. What he did know was that everyone was looking at him with both confusion and worry on their faces.

“ Jay?” the master of amber prompted after a few minutes of silence that the lightning master spent reorientating himself.

“ Master Wu was going on a research trip. It’s how it all started.” Jay found himself explaining. “ We were going after Clouse, who was in Stiix looking for something, when someone decided it was a good idea to go to the hospital instead but we got surrounded by the paparazzi again because of egotistical Kai and his stupid love affair with fame and Clouse got what he was looking for.”

“ But wouldn’t that mean that Clouse was the one who started it? Whatever _it_ was?” Cole asked, his confusion deepening.

“ And I thought Clouse got chased away from Stiix anyway?” Kai added, surprisingly choosing not to comment about the jab to his ego.

Jay looked to Nya, his eyes wild as he fought with himself to either keep telling the story he had somehow found himself telling or to just stop there and start cleaning his room like the little voice in the back of his mind was telling him to. Nya saw it and took his hand in hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze that she hoped would tell him that she would help him. A small smile formed on her lips before she turned away to face the others.

“ The truth is,” She continued for him, “ there was an alternate timeline that started on the hospital roof that day that only Jay and I somehow remember. And we’re sorry, but we’ve kept the memories of that alternate timeline from you because it was just too painful for us to remember them.”

The rest of the team just stared at the lightning and water ninja. None of them knew what to say. None of them knew how to react. Not even the nindroids could make heads or tails of what Nya was saying.

Jay shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling the hard gazes upon him but refusing to look up at anyone because he knew he would go insane if he did. Nya swallowed down the guilt that was building within her, trying to be strong for both herself and her boyfriend under those same fierce gazes. Of course, she was also waiting for one of them to say something or even do something, expecting Kai to at least blow up at them for what they did.

But none of them seemed to move… and it was starting to worry her. Not to mention, Jay was now starting to shake with fear at what was going to happen to him. If they weren’t careful, he was going to run again. Finally, after what felt like hours but was really only a matter of minutes, someone broke the silence.

“ How long have you been keeping this from us?” Lloyd asked, the tone in his voice clearly betraying how hurt he felt by it all.

“ Since that time on the hospital roof, before the fight with Krux and Acronix.” Nya replied, looking down slightly. “ I actually think they took over where the alternate timeline was.”

“ And how long did this alternate timeline go for?” Zane asked.

“ It had to have been a few weeks.”

“ A few weeks!” Kai finally exploded, knocking his chair over as he stood up in anger. “ You kept a few weeks of our lives a secret?!”

Jay cowered at the roar, but somehow, he managed to finally look up at the others.

“ Technically those few weeks didn’t happen because I reversed the event with my third… my third…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“ Wish?” Nya supplied.

The lightning ninja flinched at the word, but eventually sighed and nodded his head.

In an attempt to try and soothe him, Nya began rubbing circles into his back. Around the table, the other ninja looked at each other, each one still trying to figure out what had happened to their friend to make him act the way he did. Kai took the time to right his overturned chair and sit himself back down, but he was still obviously fuming about what was going on. Pixal merely nodded her head in understanding as she analysed what they had learnt so far.

“ That would explain why Nya keeps saying it was an alternate timeline.” She said, all eyes turning to her to explain. “ If something was reversed, like Jay mentioned, then we did not have those few weeks that Nya speaks of in the first place. There for we did not have those few weeks to lose. And, judging by my calculations, the timeline would have occurred while I was still within Zane’s processor and Cole was still a ghost, thus making these events occur around the time young Bandit arrived or even of our trip to the Dark Island in search of Misako and Ronin. Perhaps a month or two before that year’s Day of the Departed?”

Again, Jay nodded, still yet to find his voice once more.

Cole looked down at his once more empty mug of coffee. His head was still a little hazy from his lack of sleep, but now, with all this talk about an alternate timeline, he was starting to get a headache to add on top of it. Yet there was one thing that kept popping up in his head; a reminder from the night before.

“ And this alternate timeline had something to do with pirates, I’m guessing. Judging from what happened last night.” He guessed, judging if he should get up to get more coffee or not.

Once more, Jay flinched. This time, however, he managed to get up out of his seat again. Though he still looked like he needed to either remain in his seat or else go lie down because he still looked extremely panicked.

“ He trapped Clouse and Wu and Misako in his blade. That’s how it started.” The blue ninja said before finally making his way out of the room.

The others around the table watched him leave, confusion mixing in with concern on all of their faces. Nya eventually heaved a small sigh as she herself got up to clear away both hers and Jay’s dirty dishes. Even so, everyone remained quiet.

Finally, that silence was broken by none other than the black ninja.

“ Nya, who was Jay talking about?” He asked.


	5. Chapter 4

Nya didn’t end up saying who Jay had meant. In fact, she stopped talking about the events altogether after Jay had left and no amount of coaxing could get the information out of her. And it remained that way throughout the entirety of the day. She merely told them that she wasn’t going to talk about it until Jay was ready to try again.

The resulting argument between the Smith siblings on the matter – which started at around ten o’clock that morning – had eventually turned into a full-on sparring session… complete with weapons. Kai wanted to know every little detail there and then about what had happened to Jay. Nya wasn’t going to give him (or anyone else) the answers. Neither was going to back down.

The other ninja were too terrified by the intensity that the two were fighting with that none of them wanted to try and break them apart lest they themselves got hurt. In fact, it was a miracle that Nya hadn’t pierced her brother with her spear tip yet; Kai was either managing to save himself at the last minute or else Nya was holding back because she knew he was at a slight disadvantage against the long range weapon.

The only reason why the fight stopped was because Jay had started screaming about a giant spider somewhere in the monastery which caused Nya to drop her spear and sent her running to his aid. Poor Kai was left blinking at the spot where his sister had been, the rest of the world suddenly coming back into focus, as he stumbled from his failed attack.

Speaking of Jay, no one had seen him since breakfast for more than a few seconds. Well, no one but Nya. He had conveniently locked himself away in his room and seemed to be obsessively cleaning for some unknown reason. At one point, Cole had gone to his own room to get something and had found Jay moving what he could of his furniture out into the hallway so that he could wash his floor. The earth ninja was just glad that his friend hadn’t tried to move the bed on his own.

Not even when lunch time rolled around, did he emerge from wherever he was hiding. And Zane had made one of his favourite meals, as well. Nya had to take his meal to him, though judging from the direction she was going in, Jay had made his way into the lounge room… probably because his room was still drying from being washed.

When someone did manage to get a glimpse of him, though, Jay was quick to escape their detection. Though most of his friends believed it was just to escape being questioned about everything, Kai believed that the master of lightning was just trying to avoid him. And both Nya and Cole were quick to agree… which didn’t really help the Master of Fire’s mood either.

Regardless, it was clear to everyone that the master of lightning was avoiding them. And it only seemed to worry them more.

Currently, everyone was in the lounge room, trying to have a somewhat relaxing games night without the fun that Jay usually brought. So far, though, it wasn’t that much fun without their friend. And Jay was still locked up in his seemingly spotless room. The only difference from the night before, other than the change of entertainment, was that Skylor had returned to her home in the city a short time after lunch, needing to get ready for a busy night shift at the Noodle House.

So, the ninja found themselves gathered around the television once more, eyes glued to the screen as two ninja minifigures fought each other and hungry ghosts to deliver the most pizza. They were the generic black clad ninja, but each uniform sported a different coloured dragon on their backs, so it was a given when each of the real ninja chose the characters that had their favourite coloured dragons on the uniforms.

Right now, the light blue ninja seemed to be thrashing the red ninja and the multitude of ghosts that seemed to be charging at them. The red ninja couldn’t move after having been chased back a few houses by a gang of said ghosts and forced to hide under the truck that the ghosts were now circling around trying to get to him.

Kai was visibly getting worked up at not being able to move his character from under the truck, but he practically steamed when Nya’s character defeated all the ghosts and proceeded to deliver pizza to the houses that he was trying to get to himself. Unfortunately, his character’s emergence from under the truck was badly planned as Nya’s character, now having completed her task, had made its way back to the truck.

“ Oh, come on!” Kai growled, his frustration finally blowing over. “ This is the fifth time you’ve beaten me this round! Can’t a guy deliver pizza in peace?”

“ Not when you keep stealing my route!” Nya growled back, her little ninja character quickly using a few of its shuriken to pin Kai’s ninja to the side of the truck with a few commands from her controller.

“ What do you mean ‘your route’? This is clearly my route!”

“ No it’s not. Your route is the street above the one we’re on. You know, the one with all the ghosts crowding the place and all the lights on the houses turned off.”

“ Those people clearly don’t want pizza, hence why their lights are off.”

“ Their lights are off because you’re not giving them their pizza and the ghosts have crowded the street!”

Suddenly, all the ghosts on the upper street decided that there was not enough room in the street for all of them and started to converge in on each other, pulsing an eerie green colour as they began to go into what looked like a feeding frenzy on themselves.

Kai could only stare at them in disgusted horror as he tried to figure out what they were doing. Behind him, Lloyd and Cole winced, knowing exactly what was coming. Zane gained a slightly pained look like he felt sorry for his brother, but he turned to a confused Pixal instead and tried to help her understand what was going on.

Nya, on the other hand, groaned loudly and closed her eyes as the ghosts on the screen let off a bright flash of green that engulfed the entire street.

“ Thanks, Kai!” the younger Smith sibling grumbled, opening her eyes to see the giant ghost creature that reminded the ninja of a dragon. “ Now I have to try and beat the mini-boss on my own!”

“ What do you mean ‘on your own’? I can still-” Kai’s rebuttal was cut short when the ghost dragon flew over the houses to get to the red ninja on the television.

All anyone could do was watch as the glowing undead creature flicked its tail at the light blue ninja that was Nya’s character before proceeding to swallow Kai’s red ninja whole. Kai dropped his controller onto the floor in front of him as the little red ninja turned into a ghost itself and floated up into the air and off the screen. What points he did have instantly fell to zero and his icon faded until it had disappeared, clearly marking his game over.

“ He just ate me.” The fire ninja almost whispered in disbelief. Nya ignored him as she tried to focus on at least finishing the level on her own. “ That dragon just ate me. Stupid game!”

The sound of a stifled giggle made everyone freeze. The only sound that came from the room was that of Nya’s character dying at the hands of the mini-boss. No one seemed to care, though. They had all turned away from the television and were now facing the door where the sound of the laughter was coming from.

Standing in the doorway was Jay. And he had his familiar, warm smile planted firmly on his face, his eyes dancing at the sight before him. What was more was that he looked calm. It was almost like cleaning and hiding all day had done him some kind of good. To be honest, it felt like the ninja had gotten the old Jay back.

“ If Morro was still evil, he’d be proud of those ghosts right now.” Jay said, the tone in his voice playful. “ They have done what none of his goons could do.”

“ What?” Kai asked, turning back to the game in confusion… and promptly started laughing.

The ghost dragon was now curled up on the street and was watching as ghost upon ghost started to party, ransacking the two pizza trucks at the end of the street that the ninja had been using to transport their pizzas. They had even managed to take over the pizza parlour that the characters worked for, overrunning the place just to get to the deliciousness that was inside. Nya’s character was no where to be found. Instead, blocking the view of the ghost party behind it, a giant pizza had been thrown at the screen, its topping arranged to form the words ‘Game Over’.

Nya turned to face her brother as soon as she heard his laughter. At first, she was confused at what he was laughing at. But then she saw what was going on with the game and her face darkened. Those watching the scene could only cringe at what they knew was going to be another argument as that dark gaze was turned upon the unsuspecting fire ninja.

“ This is your fault.” The younger sibling growled.

“ My fault?” the older sibling repeated, his laughter cut short at her words. “ How is it my fault when your character was the one who died?”

“ Because if you had just fed your street like you were supposed to, then the mini-boss wouldn’t have formed and killed you, leaving me to fight him and the level boss on my own!”

“ She’s right, Kai.” Jay butted in with a slight smirk on his face, effectively turning all attention back to him. “ The aim of multiplayer mode is to have both streets fed before you fight the boss, that way one ninja can distract the mini-boss while the other goes for the boss himself. You’re not meant to over run a street with ghosts and get killed by the mini-boss.”

“ Oh, and you could do better, I’m guessing?” the fire ninja turned to face the lightning ninja still in the doorway.

“ I’ve beaten the game three times in single player mode. And single player mode is actually harder to play then multiplayer. In single player, you don’t have a chance to recuperate after defeating the mini-bosses when you have to face the level bosses. Not to mention you still have to look after two streets. And, spoiler alert, all the bosses come back to defend the main boss at the end of the game.”

Kai’s jaw dropped. He knew Jay was a game freak, but when had he had time to complete the game three times? They had only gotten ‘ _Pizza Ninja’_ early last week. And he knew that Jay had been busy with training and other things during that time. So how could he be that good at it already?

Judging by the silence that had managed to creep back into the room, none of the others could understand it either. But Jay just shrugged it off.

“ Dinner’s here, just so you know.” He said instead, announcing the true reason behind his sudden appearance.

“ Dinner?” Cole perked up at the mention of food.

“ Yes, you big oaf. Dinner. The meal you guys seemed to have forgotten about because you were too busy playing _‘Pizza Ninja’_. Do you even realise what the time is?”

No one replied.

Everyone turned to check the time on either their phones or watches (or on the internal clocks attached to their CPU’s in the case of the nindroids).

Jay could only sigh at the sight before him. He knew it was possible to lose track of time – he did it all the time, especially when playing video games or when he was tinkering on things – but he figured that Cole’s stomach would have complained about it by now. It was nearly 8:30 after all. As if on cue, Cole’s stomach growled fiercely, letting the world know of its displeasure of not being fed.

“ So, what is dinner?” Lloyd asked as he watched Cole’s head start to turn a dark shade of red out of sheer embarrassment.

“ Pizza.” The blue ninja replied, his smile seeming to grow. “ And I had no idea you guys were playing _‘Pizza Ninja’_ when I ordered it, either.”

Before anyone could stop him, Cole was out the door and heading for the kitchen, the smell of the pizza guiding him to the still warm food. Jay had to jump out of the way so that he didn’t get trampled on as Cole charged past. But his smile never faltered. Instead, he turned to start heading back into the kitchen himself knowing full well that if anyone was going to get any food that night, someone was going to have to stop Cole from eating all the pizza.

Behind him, Jay could hear someone turn off the game as the rest of the ninja made their way out of the lounge room.


	6. Chapter 5

The next day went by in much the same manner as the previous day. Jay remained elusive all day and seemed to show himself only when it was time for training or when it was mealtime… not that he ate much. He had gone back to being quiet and seemed to want to keep his distance from the other ninja despite him being the one who had made breakfast that morning. And it was a delicious tasting meal despite it looking somewhat like prison gruel.

No one mentioned anything about it, though. They all figured he’d explain his reasoning behind the meal eventually because they all knew he could cook decent meals. But by the time breakfast was over and Jay was finished with washing the dishes, he had yet to explain the gruel. Instead, while everyone was still seated around the table watching his movements in confusion, he left the room to start on some minor fix-it jobs that had to be done on some of the training bots.

At that point, the others knew that something had happened over night. They weren’t sure what, but it scared them that their friend could change his moods that quickly. Cole and Lloyd both figured that he had put on some sort of mask the night before just so that he could make sure they all had something to eat. It was, after all, another one of Jay’s new quirks. He always had to make sure that he and his fell ninja had something to eat, no matter where they were.

“ Okay, we’ve got to do something.” Kai declared once he was sure Jay was out of ear shot.

All eyes turned to him, surprised at the sudden break of silence. Apparently, Kai had been thinking along the same lines as the green and black ninja… and, as usual, his determination to find out what was wrong with his brother was beginning to show. This was worrying in its own right because everyone knew that the fire ninja would stop at nothing to find out what was wrong.

Nya could only sigh at her brother’s one-track mind.

“ You can’t just rush into this, Kai.” She said, trying not to growl at him.

“ Who said I’m rushing into things?”

“ I just know what you’re trying to do. And you can’t go pushing Jay for information. I’ve already told you this.”

“ Well, what else are we supposed to do to try and help him?”

“ Perhaps, like Nya proposed earlier, we should wait until we know the full story behind Jay’s troubling past before we take matters into our own hands.” Zane supplied, trying to placate his fellow ninja.

“ And what if we never find out? No offense, but Nya’s only helpful when Jay starts opening up. And if Jay is that bad that he’s starting to get angry at his girlfriend over it, then I want to be able to help him, help them, before he does something that he’s going to regret.” Cole said, his concern clear in his voice.

Nya found herself looking down at her hands at Cole’s words. She knew deep down that Jay would never truly hurt her in any way, but Cole had a point. With the way he was, Jay would more than likely do something to himself if he realised that he was hurting her. The talk the two of them had had during movie night made that clear.

And the others knew it too. Jay would lay down his own life before Nya if he had to. True it made him stronger whenever he realised that she wasn’t able to take control of a fight that she had managed to get caught in and he would rush to her aid regardless of if she wanted it or not. Kai was the same way. But they had all noticed that he would whisper in her ear after something like that happened, especially after that day on the hospital roof.

They all feared that someone would one day take advantage of the love the two shared just to get to the blue ninja or even to the light blue ninja. And that scared them, especially Kai who knew what it was like to be ruled by the capture of one he loved.

“ We just don’t want to see him get hurt.” Kai said, his voice calm as he placed a hand over his sister’s.

Nya looked up at his touch. “ But what if you do something to hurt him again like you did a couple of weeks ago?”

“ If he spots us, then we’ll explain why we were following him.”

“ Spots you?”

Before Nya could get an answer, both Kai and Cole were out of the room to go find Jay. That only served to worry her more. Jay could snap if they did anything stupid… well, even more stupid than just following him around like a shadow, if that’s what they were implying. Before she knew it, Lloyd had gotten up as well.

“ I’ll make sure they don’t do anything, Nya.” He said before dashing off after the older boys.

“ This is going to turn into a disaster.” The water ninja sighed. “ I can see it now.”

“ Don’t worry, Nya.” Zane said as he too stood from his seat. “ I’m sure the others know what they’re doing.”

“ You really think that?”

“ Well, Lloyd and Cole, maybe. Kai, I’m not too sure about. But perhaps what you need right now is to calm your mind. Would you like to do some training with me while we wait for Master Wu and Misako’s return?”

Nya’s face broke into a smile. It had been a while since she was able to spend some time with Zane as just friends… even if it was training. She had been too busy worrying about Jay lately and she knew she had to get some peace for herself. And, heck, maybe Pixal could join them for some relaxing fun afterwards.

So the two remaining ninja and the current Samurai X decided to make their own exit of the kitchen. Unfortunately, none of them could get the thought of something happening to either one of the other four boys out of their heads.

In fact, all morning Kai, Cole and Lloyd watched from the shadows as Jay fixed the broken training bots. Kai even started to fall asleep in the rafters as the minutes turned to hours, but a swift jab to his arm from Cole woke him shortly after Jay had finished his task and left the work room.

Quietly, the three hidden ninja emerged from the rafters, landing with silent feet in the room below.

“ So where do we go now?” Kai asked, peaking out of the doorway to try and determine which way Jay had gone.

“ He was muttering something about a djinn as he was leaving.” Cole replied. “ That’s why I woke you up.”

“ But I wasn’t asleep.” The fire ninja pulled his head back into the room.

“ You were totally falling asleep up there… multiple times.”

“ What do you expect? Watching someone tinkering away on some robots for hours on end is a sure-fire way to get bored. And that’s what I was. Bored.”

Kai’s glare was met by the smug expression on Cole’s face. And it was starting to get on his nerve.

“ So you admit to falling asleep.” The earth ninja smirked.

“ I was bored, not falling asleep.” The fire ninja denied, moving further into the room once more.

“ And yet this was your idea in the first place. You should have known that this kind of reconnaissance mission was going to get boring.”

“ It’s Jay. Jay is never boring.”

Cole had to give him that one. The master of lightning was a number of things from inventor to motor-mouth as well as quick on his feet, a bit of a game freak and – recently - highly stressed and a possible danger to himself. Boring was not one of those things that described Jay.

Both Kai and Cole turned at the sound of the door opening once more, fearing that Jay was returning and they would be caught red handed. Instead, they found Lloyd looking expectantly at them from the other side of the door.

“ When you two are done, we should head outside after Jay.” The green ninja said in a mater-of-fact tone.

“ What makes you say he’s outside?” Kai asked, following his leader’s directions.

“ A djinn is just another way of saying genie. You know, grant three wishes yada, yada.”

“ Only when he grants you wishes, you’ll be wishing you never met him.” Cole almost whispered.

Kai and Lloyd both turned to face Cole. The black ninja had a distant and confused look on his face, almost like he was remembering something from a dream he had had. But the weirder thing was that somehow, as soon as the words left Cole’s mouth, they too had the sense that they had heard those same words before.

It was a few seconds later that someone broke the trance the three ninja had found themselves in.

“ The mural.” Kai practically sighed.

Then he dashed off out of the room, determination easily visible on his face as he rushed to find out what a djinn had to do with the trouble Jay was obviously in. Startled by the sudden movement – and thankful that the door had been opened before hand – both Cole and Lloyd quickly found themselves in the hallway running after him.

“ How did I get caught up in this again?” Lloyd found himself asking.

“ Because you were going to blow our cover when you entered the workroom. We had to do something.” Cole replied, despite knowing it was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

“ So you kidnap me?”

“ Again, Kai’s idea.”

“ Weren’t you the leader before I grew up?”

Cole fell silent, not sure how to respond to that question. Not to mention he didn’t really want to answer it, even if he did know how to respond. Thankfully, they found Kai waiting for them just in front of the entrance of the temple, so Lloyd couldn’t question Cole further… although the fire ninja was glaring at them in an attempt to keep them silent. And beyond the doors, they could hear the sounds of flesh and metal against heavy wood.

Taking a quick peek outside, the boys watched as Jay savagely attacked the giant punching bag in the centre of the training grounds.

Amidst the barrage of kicks and punches that Jay was flinging at the thing, they could hear him growling out obscenities that no one had ever thought they’d hear come out of his mouth. Especially seeing as it was Jay who had once said that swearing was ‘a sign of weak verbal skills’. Not to mention some of the stuff he was saying was so bad that it even made Kai blush slightly, and he was the worst offender for swearing.

But still the blue ninja continued his relentless attack, unfazed by where he was, who was watching and what he was saying. In fact, every time he seemed to lose his energy, he would catch a glimpse of the mural on the wall and his attacks would start up strong again. He even took to pulling out a set of nunchaku from his belt and pummelling the punching bag with it.

To be honest, it had been quite a while since any of the other ninja had seen their friend use nunchaku, having recently taken to learning the way of the kusarigama. Even so, watching him continue his relentless attack with the hard wood poles made Kai, Lloyd and Cole all wish that they were never on his bad side (in Cole’s case, a second time). With such ferociousness and pain that was clearly visible in his attacks, all three of them were glad that the punching bag wasn’t a living thing because Jay was not holding back.

“ He’s got some serious pent up rage.” Kai whispered in shock.

“ Or pain.” Lloyd added, just as quietly.

Cole couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight before him, his worry distorting his features. If Jay’s reactions to things were this bad, he really needed to get some help. The only problem, and this was why he had followed with Kai’s plan to begin with, was that he didn’t know what was causing his best friend to be this way in the first place. And it scared him.

 _“ He’s getting worse.”_ Nya’s voice rang in his head as he continued to watch the pain his best friend was obviously in.

The black ninja couldn’t agree more with Nya’s words. He and the others had noticed the steady increase in how tense Jay was becoming ever since they had returned from the First Realm. At first, they thought that it was because of the battle ahead of them. Then they thought that it was because of his plans to make the Yin Yang Promise to Nya. Now, though, Cole could only guess that those were just parts in a much bigger form of stress for the lightning ninja.

Suddenly, Jay flung his nunchaku at the punching bag, letting it fly out of his hands and against the wall. It was almost like he was angry at the punching bag for not jumping off its hook. For a few seconds, he stood glaring at the offending piece of training equipment before launching himself at it in another bout of fists and feet.

Jay remained like that for another few minutes before he finally pulled out the kusarigama he had strapped to his back. Without missing a beat, as fast as the element he controlled, he began slashing at the punching bag before him, clearly imagining it to be the source of his problems. The sight actually sent fear running through his silent onlookers… and the words that accompanied the attack sent chills down their spines.

“ I’m not afraid!” Jay’s growl was loud enough to reach those hiding behind the door as he continued to strike at the punching bag to the point where it was literally falling apart. “ Not of you, anyway, you stupid djinn! And I’m not weak! I beat you once and I can do it again! Without anyone dying! And with the help of one of the most feared weapons a ninja has! I am strong! You couldn’t break me then and you’ll never, ever break me! Ever!”

With one final kick to the destroyed punching bag, the hinge finally gave out and sent the training equipment flying into the far wall. Jay just stood in the middle of the training grounds, panting heavily and somehow managing to calm himself from his attack.

He was about to turn around and return to the temple when he noticed the sneer on the face of the painted djinn in the mural. And, with a final, guttural roar, he shot a bolt of lightning at the already damaged punching bag, sending it up in flames.

It was then that he dropped to his knees, his energy finally spent. And Cole, Kai and Lloyd could tell. But they still weren’t sure if it was safe enough for any of them to move anywhere near their friend to make sure that he was going to be alright. If they said the wrong thing, or moved the wrong way, they were almost sure that he would break in some way, he was that fragile at that moment.

When a few minutes had passed, and nothing seemed to happen, Cole decided that it was safe to move. He had seen enough of his clearly distressed friend and what it was doing to him. And he didn’t care one bit if Kai and Lloyd were trying to stop him. He was worried about Jay and what he had said to the now dead punching bag.

But he never got the chance to even make it outside for, just as he was about to cross the threshold, steeling himself for the job of caring for the emotional wreck that was currently Jay Walker, the blue ninja stood up. This time, it was Cole who was kidnapped into the rafters as Jay made his way back into the building. And he made sure that the glare he gave Kai and Lloyd showed that he was no longer pleased with what they were doing.

The look in the other boys’ eyes, however, clearly told the black ninja that they agreed… they just didn’t want to show themselves just yet. Whatever was going on with Jay, it was driving him to extremes. And they were all starting to worry that because of those extremes, their friend was going to end up in a similar state to the monastery’s punching bag.

“ Got to make lunch for the others.” They heard Jay whisper to himself as he passed underneath his worried brothers. “ Won’t let them starve. Won’t let them suffer like me.”

Of course, Jay’s words only served to worry his friends even more. But he still didn’t seem to realise that anyone was watching him. He just continued on his way to the kitchen as if nothing had happened.

No one realised that he was actually trying to prepare himself for continuing on with his story like Master Wu had suggested when he had called the night before.

“ What did he mean when he said he could beat someone without anyone dying?” Kai asked slowly once he felt for sure that Jay was out of ear shot.

“ I don’t know.” Cole admitted as Lloyd merely shrugged. “ But I don’t like the way he said it.”

The three boys climbed down from the rafters before looking back out into the courtyard. The punching bag was still flaming by the wall, but the flames hadn’t spread, which was good. The rest of the training yard, however, still had sand and leather lying about. With a sigh, Cole turned away from the sight and started heading down the hallway.

“ Where are you going?” Kai called to him.

“ I need to talk with Nya.” Came the black ninja’s reply. “ You guys clean up?”

“ What?”

Lloyd placed a placating hand on the fire ninja’s shoulder and gave a nod to the earth ninja. He could see in Cole’s eyes that whatever he had to talk to Nya about, it concerned Jay.

“ We’ll clean up the training yard, then make sure that Jay’s okay… without getting angry with him. You let Nya know what just happened and maybe sort out a way to help Jay.” He said, already turning Kai towards the mess outside. “ Kai and I will see you at lunch.”

“ Right.” Cole nodded before heading off to find the resident water ninja.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a part of this chapter, I believe that Jay had initially remembered everything about the events of Skybound, but as time went on, he started to forget the less prominent parts, like the prison and, I’m sad to say, Echo. But don’t worry, folks. He does eventually remember Echo. I will make sure of it. For now, please enjoy some more story telling.
> 
> Also, I have the poem from the end of this chapter written out and will put it up soon for you all to enjoy. So keep an eye out for it after the next chapter or two.

Lunch was a surprise to everyone. It wasn’t some elaborately planned meal consisting of stacks of food piled onto the table. It wasn’t even a simple meal of sandwiches and fruit which Jay had been known to make for the team every now and then. No, as each of the monastery’s inhabitants sat themselves down for lunch, Jay served them all a repeat of breakfast; prison gruel. Though, for some reason, Kai, Cole and Lloyd managed to claim much larger portions of the stuff than the rest of the team.

“ Um…” Kai started, not sure how to get his thoughts out of his mouth, as he prodded at the meal before him.

“ I knew you three were there.” Jay stated simply, though he was also looking at his own bowl of gruel like he was trying to figure out why he had it in front of him.

“ Why didn’t you say anything?” Lloyd asked as gently as he could. “ We would have stopped as soon as you told us to.”

“ I wanted to see what you were going to do. When you didn’t try and question me about anything, I knew why you were following me. Then the memories came back and I lost myself. I admit it.”

Silence fell within the kitchen at Jay’s words. It was clear now that Jay knew the others were clearly worried about him. And the looks on everyone’s faces clearly showed that that worry was slowly growing with everything that he said and did. But, of course, he wasn’t aware of just how worried they actually were for him.

Jay just continued to stare at the bowl of gruel he had in front of him. It was like he couldn’t understand where it had come from despite being the one to cook it. In fact, he couldn’t understand why he was making it in the first place. But he knew he had had something similar before when he and the others had been incarcerated in prison… for whatever reason he couldn’t quite remember.

“ Nya, can I ask you something?” He asked quietly, turning to face his girlfriend.

“ What is it, Jay?” the water ninja replied gently.

“ Why were we in prison?”

Kai, who had just taken a tentative mouthful of the gruel, instantly spat it out at the mention of the word ‘prison’, covering poor Zane with the half-eaten mess. Amidst the other exclamations at the discovery, Zane glared at his spikey-haired brother before slowly wiping off the mess that was on his face. The only thing the fire ninja could do was smile sheepishly at his nindroid brother before turning his focus on to his sister and her boyfriend, wanting an explanation to Jay’s words.

“ Don’t you remember?” Nya asked, ignoring the others for now.

“ No.” Jay admitted. “ Just that we were in prison, we were fed some kind of slop and Cole ate a cake that he shouldn’t have eaten. Oh, and Soto was there for some reason.”

“ Woah, woah, woah.” Kai butted in. “ Mind explaining why we were in prison.”

“ And why I wasn’t supposed to eat cake.” Cole added, earning a glare from the fire ninja.

Jay closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stealing his nerves for what he was about to say.

“ You know how I said that someone trapped Master Wu, Misako and Clouse in their blade?” He started.

Nods of affirmation circled the table, urging him silently to continue.

“ Well, that someone was an evil djinn by the name of Nadakhan.” A shiver ran down Jay’s spine at the mention of the name and he quickly looked around in fear, in case just the utterance of his name caused the djinn to appear. Nya calmly placed her hand over his in an attempt to calm him and help him through the retelling. “ Nadakhan was angry at us for some reason and decided to take his revenge by turning Ninjago into his old home of Djinjago or whatever it was called. Djinn land. Apparently, he was some kind of djinn prince and in order for him to gain his ultimate goal of infinite wishes, then a djinn prince had to become a king on djinn land.”

“ That doesn’t exactly explain why he was angry at us if all he wanted was to be king and get infinite wishes.” Lloyd questioned.

Nya decided that then would be the right time to speak up. “ Nadakhan had the Realm Crystal so we could only assume that he returned to his home world at one point.”

Jay nodded, gaining a serious tone to his voice as he next spoke. “ And he obviously didn’t like what he saw there because he tried to turn Ninjago into a new version of his home world, literally tearing chunks out of our home and connecting them into a massive floating world of islands.”

“ The only explanation that Jay and I could come up with was that the Sixteen Realms were all interconnected in some way. So, when I destroyed the Cursed Realm to stop it from taking over Ninjago…”

“ You inadvertently caused the destruction of the djinn’s home world as well.” Zane breathed.

Nya nodded sadly. It had broken her heart when she first realised what she had done, the needless suffering she had caused when she had unknowingly destroyed an innocent realm. And just talking about it now brought back the pain that she had felt then… and it hurt just as bad now.

But just like then, Jay was there to keep her strong. Sensing the turmoil within his girlfriend, the lightning master twisted his hand around so that it was resting on top of hers and gave it a light but comforting squeeze.

“ If we had known something like that was going to happen, we would have found another way to defeat the Preeminent.” He whispered in her ear.

Suddenly, no one felt like eating anymore.

They all knew that the life of a ninja was not a pleasant one, no matter how much one seemed to like all the action and adventure that being a ninja gave you. There was always the ever-present reminder that someone could die because of what they were and what they did. But to hear that something one of their own had done in order to protect their home had destroyed not one but _two_ realms and caused suffering to possibly millions of innocent bystanders… it was enough to make anyone’s stomach churn.

Surprisingly, it was Cole who was the first to move his bowl away from him. He, Pixal and Zane knew all too well the consequences of their job. Despite all the kidnappings and near-death experiences that each one of his teammates had gone through, the three of them had actually died; Zane when he defeated the Golden Master, Pixal when she was shut down during the fight against the Digital Overlord and then again when Zane had told them he had found her scrapped at Chen’s island, and himself when he had been cursed by Yang to become a ghost for what was supposed to be the rest of eternity.

And Pixal wasn’t even part of the crime-fighting team when she had died. She had merely been helping out. Which just goes to show that no one was safe when you knew the ninja… and that just scared Cole more.

Jay looked around at the sullen faces of his teammates, wondering how he was going to get their minds away from the depressing thoughts that were more than likely going through their heads at that moment. He hated seeing his friends in that much pain, whether it was emotional or physical, and would usually try his best to bring a smile to their faces… even if it didn’t seem like it at first. But, this time, he could not figure out how to get everyone out of the sorrow that they had found themselves in, especially when all he could think about was prison.

“ This got depressing real quick.” He found himself muttering despite his blank mind. “ Can… uh… can we get back to the prison question, please?”

That seemed to snap people back into focus.

“ Yeah, why were we in prison?” Kai asked again.

Nya nodded her head, forcing down the emotions that were beginning to well within her at the thought of what she had done. The boys were right. They needed to continue with the story before Jay got cold feet again… or before Jay gave them a second repeat of gruel for dinner.

“ It was simple, really.” She said. “ We were framed. Nadakhan found out about us somehow and framed us for crimes we didn’t commit.”

“ How’d he do that?” Lloyd asked.

Surprisingly, it was Pixal who answered. “ A djinn not only has the power to grant wishes but also has the power to disguise themselves in any way they deem necessary to complete their goals. Some can even turn themselves invisible, while others can possess other beings or objects. All djinns are extremely fast and seem to appear to be impervious to human weapons.”

“ She’s right.” Jay agreed. “ He turned into Lloyd to steal from the bank, Zane to freeze the Mega Monster Amusement Park rides, Cole to cause earthquakes in the city. He turned into me to steal a picture of Chen from the museum! Chen!”

“ Why did he choose Chen of all people?” Kai asked.

“ How should I know!”

“ The crazy maniac was probably the easiest painting to steal.” Cole shrugged. “ That painting is way too creepy for my liking, if I’m being honest. Especially without that weird headdress thing he had.”

“ Got that right.” Kai agreed with a laugh.

The tension disappeared slightly from the room after that. Smiles and small laughs managed to go around the table with Lloyd even managing to take a few mouthfuls of his gruel.

“ Anyway.” Nya started, returning everyone’s attention back to the story. “ We were framed, so we split up to save ourselves. Then Kai sent us a riddle to get us to meet up at the monastery before it was rebuilt… which Jay managed to be the last to figure out.”

“ In my defence, my brain is not hard-wired for riddle solving.” Jay grumbled.

But to everyone around him, they were just glad to see him like this again. They were starting to miss their light-hearted friend.

Nya merely smiled before continuing. “ We talked about what we knew about djinns – which, at the time, wasn’t much at all – and looked over some things that Zane had found before deciding to split up into pairs to find out more information. Zane and Lloyd went together to the Library of Domu, Kai and I scouted for other bits of information, and Jay and Cole went back to Mega Monster Amusement Park to search the scene of the crime.”

“ And Cole ditched me at the amusement park after we found out that Ronin was after us.” Jay grumbled. “ We were just minding our own business, figuring out how we were framed, when that backstabbing fraud shows up, states he’s already caught you guys, chases me onto the working rollercoaster and then makes me fall right into a sack! All the while, this guy here,” Jay points at an innocent looking Cole, “ he’s disappeared and is enjoying himself somewhere in the park. What happened to a ninja never leaves a ninja behind?”

“ Wait.” Cole interrupted. “ How did I get captured if I was a ghost?”

“ He’s got thermal vision.” Both Jay and Nya deadpanned, not just having heard the story before but also knowing that Ronin prided himself in being able to obtain and use everything he could in his various attempts to steal things.

“ He does?”

His question was answered by silent nods from not only Jay and Nya, but also Zane and Pixal who had scanned the number of weapons Ronin had in his arsenal.

“ And that’s how we all ended up in Kryptarium Prison.” Nya stated. “ Ronin captured us and we had to spend at least two days in there, trying to figure out how to get out and save Ninjago from the terrors of a pirate djinn. Darreth tried to get us out with some tools he baked into a cake… but Cole ate the entire thing without us even noticing. Then, during dinner one night, we started talking about the djinn with Soto on what we needed to know. He told us the djinn’s name was Nadakhan and that he had been the one who originally trapped him in the Teapot of Tyrahn. It was Soto who told us the three rules of wishing.”

“ You can’t wish for more wishes, you can’t wish for love and you can’t wish to harm others.” Jay pointed out, his face once more darkening with each mention of the word ‘wish’.

“ And the only way to slow down a djinn enough to stop him from moving on us so you could capture him was with Tiger Widow venom. One drop of that stuff is strong enough to kill a man but only strong enough to tire out a djinn.”

“ It’s also super rare and even harder to get.”

“ But there was a catch.” Lloyd guessed, noticing the darkened look on his brother’s face.

Nya nodded. “ We had to help Soto get out of jail.”

“ What!” Kai exclaimed.

“ Oh tell me we didn’t.” Cole pleaded.

“ We did.” Nya sighed, almost smiling at the reactions she was getting. “ It was the only way to get information on where the Tiger Widow was.”

“ And where was that?” Zane asked.

“ We had to get Soto’s map from a lantern that was on Nadakhan’s ship, the _Misfortune’s Keep._ ”

A chill went down Jay’s spine at the very mention of Nadakhan’s ship and he forced himself out of his chair. His eyes glazed over as he tried to forget the painful memories that had embedded themselves into his brain as he turned away from the concerned calls of his friends. The only thing he knew was that he had to get out of the kitchen.

He practically ran to his room, breaking his door as he slammed it shut and rushing to get his suitcase. The only thing that could enter his mind at that moment was that he had to get out of the monastery… regardless of whether Master Wu was there or not. He had to get away from the pain that the others were bringing back to his mind.

Opening the suitcase after placing it on the bed, he rushed to his nightstand and started randomly chucking clothes into it. Whether they actually landed in the suitcase or not was another matter. After throwing a significant amount of clothes in the bed’s general direction, he turned to his books. Comic books flew through the air followed shortly by his engineering books and the more private books he kept in a hidden compartment under his bed.

But when he pulled out an old blue and black covered notebook with loose papers haphazardly tucked between its pages, he faltered. It was his book of poems. He hadn’t written in it since they had gotten back from the Dark Island that second time. And the last thing he had written was the poem he titled ‘ _I should have known’_ … a poem he was supposed to tell the story of to the rest of his teammates.

Sitting back on his haunches, Jay flicked through the pages until he reached his last entry.


	8. chapter 7

“ There you all are.”

The sound of Master Wu’s voice interrupted the game of chess that Zane and Cole were playing, causing all six ninja and samurai to look to the door to the lounge room in shock. But even though he had only been gone for not even two days, all of his students looked excited to see him again. Nya even looked relieved like she was worried he had disappeared again. It was almost like something had happened while he was gone.

“ It is good to see you all training your minds as well as your bodies.” The old master said, looking amongst each of his students. “ But where is Jay?”

“ We think he might be in his room, cooling off.” Kai supplied.

“ Cooling off?”

“ Jay and I have been slowly telling the others about that alternate timeline.” Nya explained. “ We started yesterday with you and Misako being taken by Nadakhan and today we managed to get through explaining a little about the djinn and the fact that he managed to send us all to Kryptarium Prison. But Nadakhan’s ship was mentioned as well as the tiger widow and Jay took off again. We haven’t seen him since lunch and that was an hour ago.”

“ I see.”

“ Wait, you know the story, Uncle Wu?” Lloyd asked.

Wu nodded his head.

“ Both Jay and Nya came to me not long after Jay started showing troubling signs and told me of their story. It was with my guidance that Jay has been seeking help for his troubled mind. Though perhaps you should go and reassure him that you are still there for him and not trying to force him into telling you anything.” He said, pointedly looking directly at Kai as he spoke his last words.

“ Why does everyone believe that I forced him to open up about the few weeks of our lives that seemed to have happened without us knowing?” the fire ninja groaned.

“ Maybe because you did when you put on that pirate movie a few nights ago.” Cole pointed out.

“ I’m telling you, I thought he would like it!”

Zane heaved a sigh, turning back to his game and finally making his next move. “ We are not going to continue with this argument again. Also check.”

Cole returned his focus to the chess board in front of him at the call. After a few minutes of scrutinizing, he made his move only to be called to check again and again. It wasn’t long after that before Zane finally called check mate.

Master Wu watched the end of the game before turning his gaze to Nya. “ Can I see you in the meditation room, Nya?”

“ O-of course, Master Wu.” The water ninja replied, a little confused.

“ And maybe one of you others could check on Jay while we talk.”

With that said, Master Wu turned away from the lounge room and started his trek down towards the meditation room. Not long after, he heard the soft patter of feet behind him signalling that Nya was following him and behind her, the slightly heavier steps of Lloyd. It seems Lloyd had taken it upon himself to go check that Jay was okay. But, for now, he was more concerned with finding out how his lightning wielder had fared from Nya, considering the concerning tone in his voice the night before.

Quietly, he set up the incense burner and sat himself on the floor in his favourite meditation pose, his bamboo staff resting on the floor between him and the incense burner. After a few minutes, Nya joined him on the other side of the incense burner.

“ I called Jay last night, knowing he would be troubled by my absence yesterday.” The old master started. “ He seemed troubled, but he wouldn’t tell me over the phone. Did anything happen while I was gone?”

“ Not so much while you were gone, Master Wu,” Nya admitted, “ but during the movie night before you left. Kai put on a pirate movie for movie night and Jay panicked so bad that he started hyperventilating. He would have passed out if I hadn’t managed to get him to focus on me, though I had to get Cole and Zane to stand in front of the television when I realised I needed the help this time. It took nearly fifteen minutes before he was calm enough to even stand up. I seriously think he’s getting worse.”

Master Wu hummed in thought as he took in this information. But upon looking into Nya’s worried brown eyes, he instantly knew there was more to her story.

“ What else happened?” He urged gently, after a few minutes of silence had fallen over them.

“ Well, I took Jay back to his room and we managed to play a few rounds of _Uno_ before he was calm enough to talk it over with me. He told me what he saw during his panic attack and I made sure he knew that no one was ever going to come for him like that again or for me when he started on that subject. But then he heard Cole coming down the hallway and feared it was either Nadakhan or one of his sky pirates coming for me. The steps had been quiet though, so I asked Jay if he really thought it would be a pirate and he snapped at me.

“ When I managed to calm him down again, I told him that it was time that we told our story. Only this time, he didn’t like the sound of it. He tried to convince me to not tell the others and I tried to convince him that telling them would help him. I kinda told him that we were going to start telling the others what happened the next day… which was yesterday.”

“ I see. And how did you know it was Cole that was walking down the hallway?”

“ To be honest, I didn’t know it was Cole at first. I figured it would either be him or Kai because of their rooms being in the same hallway. But when no more footsteps were heard for a long time and then there was the sound of one of the doors being hurriedly opened and closed, I figured it was one of them and that they had heard at least some of our conversation. When I left the room, I noticed that Cole’s door was open slightly, which it hadn’t been when I led Jay to his room, and no lights were on. Also, Cole was right behind the door when I opened it, and he looked scared. That’s how I knew it was him.”

Master Wu waited a few more minutes in silence, still taking in what he was hearing, before giving a small nod. “ What did you do then?” he asked.

Nya thought for a minute, before continuing. “ I took Cole into my room so Jay didn’t have to listen to us talking in the next room over. I… may have started out a little rough, though. But it really didn’t last long. I didn’t know if I should tell him what was wrong with Jay or if I should get Jay to tell Cole and the others what was going on, but Cole kinda figured it out on his own and I just confirmed what he was thinking. And he told me that the others were figuring it out as well, so, after thinking it over, Cole and I went back to the lounge room. I kind of figured that if anyone was going to get in trouble with Jay, it might as well be me. I did go to Jay’s room to see if I could tell the others, though, but he was asleep… or at least trying to get to sleep. He had his back to the door.”

“ How much of this story did you tell the others, Nya?”

“ I didn’t tell them anything. I only confirmed that Jay had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and refused to tell them anything more on the matter until Jay was ready to open up. I didn’t even push Jay to start telling the others about the sky pirates yesterday.”

“ Why do I have a feeling that Kai played a hand in that.”

“ Because he did. After Jay realised I had told the others about his PTSD and I explained that that was all I told them, I urged him that it was time to tell the others about the sky pirates. He started heading out of the kitchen to find and talk to you when Kai stopped him by saying that you had gone to do some research and wouldn’t be back until today. The next thing we knew, Jay looked like he was about to faint. We got him back to the table where he started mumbling about how something started and then, when he was more coherent, he started the story. I explained that there had been an alternate timeline that lasted a few weeks, but before we could get any further than you, Misako and Clouse being trapped in a sword, Jay left the room and I kept silent about it for the rest of the day.

“ Jay went on a cleaning spree of his bedroom, moving out most of his furniture to wash his floors. And he started cleaning the lounge room as well, but he found a spider hiding behind the television that I had to… get rid of just to calm him down. I think he did end up finishing cleaning the lounge room because I found him there when lunch rolled around. He stayed away from the others for the rest of the day until dinner rolled around when he reminded the rest of us that we had to eat. He seemed okay then, like he was before the sky pirates episode, but something changed over night and he went back to being elusive and depressed.

“ He served us gruel for breakfast and lunch and kept away from us all morning. Cole also told me that he was getting really angry at the large punching bag again, this time slashing it to pieces and setting it on fire after knocking it off its hook. He said that Jay was growling at Nadakhan, claiming he wasn’t afraid, that he wasn’t weak and that he’d beat someone again without anyone dying. He said that he wouldn’t be able to ever be broken but Cole thinks that Jay already is. He said so himself.

“ Then, when Jay served us up gruel for lunch, he asked me if I knew why we were in prison. He forgot about why we were there. The only things he remembered were that we were in prison, we were fed some kind of slop, Cole ate a cake and that Captain Soto was a part of it. I had to fill in the gaps for everyone, explaining how we got there and what happened when we were in Kryptarium Prison. Jay helped when he could, going crook at Ronin and Cole even though Cole doesn’t actually remember doing anything. And I kind of had to tell the others that I basically destroyed Nadakhan’s home world when I destroyed the Preeminent. Then Nadakhan’s ship was mentioned and Jay ran out of the room again.”

“ I see.”

Silence flowed through the room, thicker than ever… or so Nya believed.

Master Wu, however, felt troubled by the silence. He was grateful to Nya for not pushing Jay into explaining everything about their story in one fell swoop like he had a feeling the other ninja wanted, Kai especially. Though he wasn’t quite sure if giving Jay a day to start talking was right or not. Perhaps Jay was not quite ready to speak just yet with how things seemed to be going. He would have to talk to Jay to discern if it had been the best choice of action.

But something still didn’t feel right in his monastery. And his concern only grew when he heard the sound of running footsteps coming towards them. Within a few seconds, the door to the meditation room was flown open to reveal a panicked looking Lloyd.

“ Jay’s gone!” was all that Lloyd managed to get out.

“ What?” Nya questioned, not sure she had heard right.

“ I went to check on Jay like you said, Master Wu, but when I got there, his door was broken and he had clothes and books thrown all over his room. I think he’s left the monastery.”

Before anyone could stop her, Nya was on her feet and already charging down the hallway towards her boyfriend’s room. Lloyd quickly followed her but detoured back to the lounge room to alert the others of what he had seen. Master Wu, though troubled, took a slower approach to what he had heard, gathering his staff and making his way to the bedrooms at a determined but slightly slower pace than that of his students.

Lloyd was right. Jay’s door, though still mainly intact, had a snapped wooden support beam where one’s hand would usually fit. The adjoining paper sheets had been torn because of the lack of support, too. But the weird thing about the door was that the broken piece of wood was blackened in the shape of a hand, the paper beyond also charred despite not seeming to have actually come alight… though, perhaps Jay had already put out the fire.

And the room beyond was a mess if ever there was one. Clothes and books of all sorts were thrown haphazardly about. Jay’s toothbrush was gone from its usual place by the sink and there was the definite imprint of a suitcase still on the bed, not to mention it seemed to be the only clean spot in the room. And yet, the only thing that seemed to take up that spot now was an open notebook with what looked like loose pages sticking out of it in the usual unkempt manner that Jay kept his workbooks in.

Slowly, Nya entered the room, careful not to touch or even move anything. Thoughts raced through her mind as she tried to figure out what had happened. Had she been too forceful on Jay? Should she have gone after him as soon as he left the kitchen earlier? More importantly, where had he gone?

“ Woah, what happened in here?” Kai’s voice penetrated her thoughts, forcing her to turn to the door.

The other ninja were crowding around the door behind Master Wu. The spinjitsu master had a thoughtful look on his face as he studied the chaos of the room.

“ It seems that Jay has tried to escape the memories of what has happened in the past.” He replied, making his way into the room and over to the bed. “ Now, more than ever, you need to show him just how valuable he is to us all.”

“ Master Wu?” Cole’s voice was thick with the confusion of everyone around.

“ You must find Jay.”

It was all that needed to be said for everyone to realise just how troubling things had become. But for some strange reason, no one could move to act on those words.

Nya looked down at the book, her thoughts racing even faster than before, and instantly her eyes skimmed across the hand-written words of the poem within. It was dark in the sense that it clearly showed Jay’s fear and pain, but everything written was the truth. Somehow Jay had managed to sum up his version of what had happened within a few weeks onto two A4 sheets of paper.

Carefully, Nya picked up the book. She could feel Master Wu’s wary gaze on her, silently questioning what she was planning on doing, but she did her best to ignore it and turned to the others who were still to enter the room. While she was reading the poem, she got this feeling that it could help them see things the way Jay saw it when it had happened. This poem could possibly be a big help in telling the story.

Once again, Nya hoped that what she was doing was right and that she would be forgiven.

“ I… I’m not usually one to condone doing something like this,” She eventually said, looking both worried and guilty about what she was doing, “ but I really think you guys should read this. But only this poem. Don’t go flipping through the pages or I’ll make you regret it.”

“ But, sis…” Kai started, clearly not expecting this turn of events.

“ I just think this poem will help you understand some things.”

“ Be careful where you tread, Nya.” Master Wu warned as he stepped up to her, his eyes possibly harder than they had been earlier.

“ Yes, Master Wu.” The water ninja bowed her head before watching as her master left the room.

It was odd. In one sense, the warning was weighing quiet heavily in the room. But in another, Nya felt like he trusted her judgement enough to let her continue with her plans. Regardless, it was still enough to sow the seed of doubt in her mind… and the looks the others were sending her way certainly didn’t help keep that doubt at bay. They all had questioning looks on their faces varying from sceptical to borderline horror at the very thought of invading someone’s privacy.

Yet, despite the doubt that was circulating, it almost felt wrong _not_ to let the others read this one poem that Jay had written. Of course, it wasn’t to show how great a poet Nya thought he was (she was being biased when she said it was great). It was more to help them realise the possible danger that Jay could be in… be it from someone else or even from himself. The pain and fear written within the words were but a small portion of what Nya knew Jay was feeling. Kai, Lloyd, Cole and Zane, at the very least, needed to see that.

“ Please, guys.” Nya found herself begging. “ It might help us help Jay.”

“ How can you be sure?” Cole asked, still eyeing the book from where he stood on the other side of the broken door.

“ Because it’s about what happened. It’s a poem on Jay’s perspective on what happened with that stupid djinn Nadakhan.”

The others looked at each other, the venom that Nya spoke the end of her sentence with worrying them slightly. Or rather, added to their worry. They were still unsure about what they should do; read the poem and suffer unknown consequences for invading Jay’s privacy, or not read the poem and risk not being able to help Jay more efficiently later. Finally, after a few minutes of silent thinking, Zane moved into the room.

“ Perhaps it would be okay if we read just this one poem.” He said, though he looked like he was still trying to convince himself of his words.

“ Zane?” Kai was getting confused.

“ When a child goes through some ‘rough times’ as you would say, such as they suffer from depression or anxiety, it is not uncommon for them to take up writing in a journal.”

“ This isn’t a journal, though.”

“ A journal is merely the most common method of writing one’s thoughts. It is highly possible that Jay turns his thoughts into poems instead. Not to mention we are already treating this book as something equally as private as a journal.”

“ He’s got a point.” Cole mused.

Lloyd, however, had gone on to mimic Kai’s confusion. “ But what do kids keeping journals have to do with this poem and the fact that Jay is pretty much running away?”

“ As a parent reads their child’s journal to make sure that their child’s anxiety or depression does not reach the stage where their child feels they must take drastic measures, perhaps reading this poem will help us, as Nya has mentioned, to understand what could be going on in Jay’s head somewhat.” Zane replied.

“ But isn’t that still invading privacy? No matter how justified you may think it is?”

This time, Lloyd was right.

“ Gah, this is so confusing!” Kai suddenly exploded.

“ Wait.” Cole hesitated, silently having run through multiple scenarios in his head during all this. “ I just thought of something.”

All eyes turned to the Earth Master questioningly as he, too, entered the room. Suddenly, the room started feeling like it was getting crowded. And this was despite the fact that it was big enough to comfortably fit everyone within its walls. Not to mention the centre of the room suddenly felt like it was this one poem that no one could agree on reading or not. But everyone tried to ignore that fact and instead tried focussing on Cole.

“ What if Jay planted the book there like that?” Cole continued. “ What if this is his way of trying to tell us this story that he can’t seem to get out? I mean, I’m just throwing it out in the air here, considering we’re all assuming he _doesn’t_ want us to read it.”

“ And how would we know that’s what Jay would want? What clues do we have?” Kai asked, still doubtful.

There were no clues. It was just speculation.

And yet, something still didn’t feel right.

“ Perhaps Mr Cuddlywump is the clue that Kai speaks of?” Pixal finally spoke up, her eyes glancing to the bed as she searched the room for possible clues.

All eyes turned to her in confusion before being averted to where she directed their attentions. Sure enough, the blue, stitched up stuffed animal was sitting up against one of the end bed posts and holding what looked to be a _Starfarer_ comic book.

Instantly, the others knew that something was wrong. Even if Jay was running away, he never went anywhere without taking that stuffed toy if he could help it, despite what he said and what others thought. So, either something really bad had happened to Jay or he knew that the others were going to come after him.

And if Mr Cuddlywump was a clue to the fact that Jay wanted to be found, then the _Starfarer_ comic had to be a clue as to where he was. Especially seeing that the cover had Fritz Donnegan in his iconic pose proclaiming his iconic catchphrase. And the only other place where they had seen that pose in person (sort of) was at Jay’s new villa. Unfortunately, neither one of the two clues linked to the poem they seemed to be fighting over.

Cole stepped closer to the two items at the end of the bed, taking them in hand.

“ I’m just gonna take a wild guess and say that Jay wants to meet us at his villa and that we better bring his stuffed toy with us.” He said, looking more at the comic book in his hand than at the blue animal.

“ You know Jay would have a fit if he heard you call Mr Cuddlywump just a toy.” Nya sighed despite the smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“ Probably.”

Lloyd, however, have been staring at the comic book like he was trying to remember something about it. The book was slightly worn from having been well read a number of times by each of the ninja. And a couple of the corners looked to have been folded slightly in classic dog ears at one point or another. But a distant memory was tugging at the edges of the green ninja’s mind at the sight of the book.

Finally, he managed to pull the memory to the front of his mind. It was during one of the times where Jay had to look after him when he was still a kid and there were Serpentine running around. He had managed to convince the blue ninja to take him to a comic book store so he could get the latest issue of _Starfarer_ … and where he had convinced him about how awesome the series was.

Of course, it had taken him a lot of time and a lot of comic book waving for Jay to even taken the first issue of _Starfarer_ out of his hands and start flicking through it, but after a few page turns, Lloyd knew he had captured his victim.

There was just one thing that separated that particular copy (and every other _Starfarer_ comic book that Jay owned) from those that Lloyd or anyone else had. In place of the printed price on the front cover, Jay had a sticker of a lightning bolt. And Jay had made sure to put one of those stickers on that first issue that Lloyd had made him get almost as soon as they had returned to the _Destiny’s Bounty._

Sure enough, as Lloyd looked closer to the comic book in Cole’s grasp, there was an old lightning sticker where the price was supposed to be. And that meant that Jay had purposefully planted that one comic book and not some random issue from his collection. Which also meant…

“ Cole’s right.” He said, finally blinking and forcing everyone’s attention on him.

“ I am?” Cole questioned, clearly confused. Though he had been wondering why Lloyd had been staring at the comic book for a good two minutes now.

“ Jay wants us to read the poem. He planted the poem book just like he planted Mr Cuddlywump and that particular issue of _Starfarer_.”

“ And how do you get that?” Kai asked.

“ Because that’s the comic book I practically waved in his face to get him to read the _Starfarer_ series. That’s the book I got him hooked on. It’s got the lightning sticker to prove it.”

“ But he puts lightning stickers on all his comic books.”

“ Yeah, but he could only ever find one sticker that had a rainbow colour to it. And that sticker went onto his first copy of _Starfarer_. I was there when he found it. Plus, I only waved the first issue in his face almost a gazillion times to get him to read it.”

“ Right.”

“ Hey, you, Cole and Zane were off looking for snakes, leaving Jay to look after me!”

“ Whatever.”

Lloyd merely rolled his eyes at his red brother, a soft sigh managing to escape his lips as he turned to the book of poems still in Nya’s hands. “ Jay wants us to read the poem and then go meet him at the villa. What is so hard to understand about that?”

“ I don’t know.” Kai growled. “ Maybe because it’s been two weeks since Jay last grilled us about the fact that we eavesdropped on him finding out that he’s actually adopted, which is way more personal than messing with his machines or his game scores and stuff like that. And, as much as I’m worried about the guy, he’ll probably fry us all for this if it turns out he didn’t want us to read the thing.”

“ And you’re usually the first one to want to do something like this, regardless of consequences.” Cole’s glare spoke volumes even if his voice wasn’t that loud.

“ Believe me, I’m all for rushing out to the villa right now just to find him and bring him back here kicking and screaming if I have to.”

“ But you won’t read some poem that would probably give you the basic rundown of everything you want to know.”

Silence.

Kai glowered at the floor, not keen on wanting to look at anyone at that point in time, knowing that each one of them was thinking exactly the same thing. The thing was, he felt he was starting to get back into Jay’s good books after two weeks of the lightning ninja being a little edgy around him. He didn’t want to lose that progress over some stupid poem… although, thinking on it now, pushing Jay into telling him the story could also play a part in breaking their friendship further.

The others left him to his thoughts, giving him the space he needed before he most likely blew up at them with his explanation. Instead, they turned to the poem book that Nya was still holding, now judging who would be the first to read the poem now that they (mostly) agreed to read it. Cole suggested rounds of Rock, Paper, Clamp and whoever won got to read first. But then Pixal suggested reading it aloud so that everyone could hear it and everyone was pushed into another round of discussions.

By the time they had finally made a decision (Cole was to read the poem aloud because it was he who had the thought of Jay planting the poem in the first place), they found Nya no longer had the poem in her hands. Instead, Kai now had the book and was silently mouthing the words as his eyes travelled the pages. And judging by the ever-increasing worry on the Fire master’s face, the words he was reading did not exactly have a happy meaning.

Kai almost dropped the book by the time he finished reading. His hands shook slightly and his face had drained of some of its colour, worrying the others. Slowly, he handed the book out to Cole for him to read before turning to face Nya.

“ Death?” He asked his sister quietly.

Nya looked down at her feet. She knew this was going to happen. She knew he’d find out about… that. She knew they all would. But a part of her had also hoped that explaining everything about that final battle wouldn’t happen so soon. The feeling of someone’s hands grasping her upper arms almost like she was a lifeline forced her to look up into the concerned and slightly wet brown eyes of her brother.

“ Why didn’t you say anything?” He breathed.

“ We’re telling you now.” She replied, equally as soft.

“ Nya.”

“ You don’t know how hard this story is for us, Kai. It’s taken us years just to tell you this much and already Jay’s run off.”

“ But death?”

Before Nya could get another word out of her mouth, Kai had enveloped her in what had to be his most protective hug ever. The way his strong arms wrapped around her she was almost sure he wasn’t going to let go anytime soon. But at the same time, it was almost like he thought she was the most fragile thing he had ever found and he didn’t want to squeeze too hard or else he’d break her. The only thing she could do was wrap her own arms around Kai and squeeze him as hard as she could, letting just how scared she was about everything that had happened flow through him that way.

Brother and sister returned to their senses a few minutes later, once everyone else had read the poem and the air in the room became heavy. It was Cole stumbling around in the room looking for writing utensils which pulled them apart.

“ Cole, what are you doing?” Nya asked, watching as Cole pulled himself up off the floor, a red pen in hand.

“ Getting the pen that rolled off the table.” Came her reply.

“ And why do you need a pen?” Kai asked.

“ Because I’m going to make sure Jay knows that we’re always there for him. And I’m going to do it using ink, not just actions and words. Now I just need some paper.”

“ What?”

Cole couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. “ I’m going to add to Jay’s poem, that way, when he next reads it, he’s reminded that he’ll always have us. I just need a spare piece of paper so that I don’t write any mistakes into the actual book.”

Nya took the book of poems from Pixal, quickly glancing over the poem in question once more, before looking up at the others with a shine in her eyes. If they could show Jay all the ways that they were willing to help him, then maybe he’d let them help a lot easier than before.

“ I… I think that might work.” She said. “ But we have to do it together. It has to come from all of us. And it has to be the same as how he’s previously done his poem.”

“ Right.” Lloyd nodded. “ And Cole’s got the right idea about using a different coloured pen. It can help differentiate our section from the rest of Jay’s poem.”

Kai could only watch in confusion as Pixal and Zane added their own bits of information to the babble that was Cole, Nya and Lloyd. He had no idea what to even wright for his own poetry let alone add to something that someone else had done. Heck, what if Jay didn’t want something like this? They would be in so much trouble if that was the case.


	9. chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for possible dark thoughts that could lead to attempted suicide (not that it happens, but the warnings there).

Jay didn’t know when things had changed. A few days ago, he had been so sure that he could handle things on his own. He had been so sure that he didn’t need to worry the others with his troubles. He was the joker after all. The others had to laugh with him, maybe cringe a little, he admitted, but always relax around him. They weren’t meant to worry about him.

Now, though, he wanted to let them know of the pain and fear he felt inside. He didn’t want to be alone in this anymore. Not that he was ever alone, alone. He always had Nya by his side to help him and feel with him. But there were things that not even she could help with.

No matter how hard she tried to understand the torture he had endured on the _Misfortune’s Keep_ , he knew she couldn’t imagine it. To be honest, none of the guys could either. But they could understand a little more. Especially considering he did it to protect them. And Lloyd would understand even more because he had been in similar situations himself.

Then again, they could just as easily turn on him just like they did on Tiger Widow Island. Cole would probably yell at him again and Lloyd would look on in disappointment. So would Zane, if he was being honest. And even though Nya wouldn’t be mad at him this time around, Kai’s wrath was as fierce as the flames he controlled.

He put his hands up against the wet tiles of the shower wall, hanging his head and letting the running water cascade down his back. The shower had become the only place where he could truly be alone and think. Anywhere else and he was bound to be found by someone. And when he was found, whoever it was usually ended up derailing his thought trains.

Admittedly, sometimes the trains he had chug-a-lugging through his brain were pretty dangerous, so he didn’t mind those trains coming to their crashing demises. The tracks that those trains travelled usually led to the dark abyss that he knew the others would not want him going down… the abyss that would ultimately end in Ninjago no longer having a lightning master to protect it.

Yeah, he was always glad those trains got derailed in epic ways worthy of Kai’s approval.

But the other trains, the ones where he usually fought with himself over what had happened or over telling the others, the ones similar to the train that was currently chug-a-lugging through his brain right now, he didn’t like it when those trains got destroyed. Those were the trains that usually helped him work out what he was going to do. And when those trains reached their last stop, it usually turned out good.

It was those good thought trains which led him to talking to Master Wu about what had happened or deciding whether or not he should leave Mr Cuddlywump at the monastery so that the others knew he wanted to talk to them. Those trains had very good ideas on them… sometimes. Okay, so maybe the idea to run away to the villa and have an extremely long shower there wasn’t the best of ideas, but, at least, it was giving him the chance to think.

If he had had his thinking shower back at the monastery, he would have been yelled at to get out of the shower fifteen minutes ago or he would have been yelled at for using up all the hot water. Either that or someone would get it in their heads that he was doing something dangerous and so would try and stop anything bad from happening.

Don’t get him wrong, he was thankful for the care his friends all sent his way. He was just more thankful at the moment that he had decided to set up the villa for use as a possible hide out in the city. Sorting out the water, heating and electrical systems for the place was another of those good idea trains.

Thinking showers generally required hot water and lots of time to think away from friends and family. And this particular thinking shower was proving quite soothing on his back this time around. Of course, the hot water rushing down his back had to bring him back to the main reason why he was at the villa in the first place.

As soon as the other ninja got there, he was going to have to explain his poem. He was going to have to explain the pain of losing them one by one to a self-absorbed djinn pirate and the loneliness he felt on that creepy island, hidden amongst the fear for that giant spider. As soon as they got there, he was going to have to tell them about the torture of _Misfortune’s Keep_. He’d probably have to show them the scars too.

The scars.

Yang’s temple remaining floating in the air was not the only thing that didn’t change back when Jay had made his final wish. The scars from Scrap ‘n’ Tap were still etched into his body, always reminding him of what he had endured. And not just from Scrap ‘n’ Tap. His right ankle was slightly weaker than it had been before the sky pirates showed themselves thanks to that stupid vengestone ball and chain Nadakhan had made him wear.

He wasn’t sure if the others had noticed but he had lost his balance a number of times because of that new weakness he had. His speed had slowed down, too. Not to mention when his leg would just give out underneath him for no apparent reason. He was sure the excuse of him tripping all the time was starting to make the others realise that he was hiding something.

In all honesty, he was afraid of what the others would say and do to him… especially when they found out what he had done, keeping what he had known a secret. And that led back to his thoughts on his friends turning their backs on him. That had hurt the first time. If it happened again…

“ Stop thinking like that, Jay.” He scolded himself, bashing a hand against the tiles of the bathroom. “ They are still your friends. Even if they do… take it hard, they wouldn’t outright abandon you… would they?”

Jay moved his head back into the stream of water and gave a shriek as the now cold water poured onto his face. A few seconds later he pulled his face out of the stream of water, spluttering slightly after having not expected the sudden cold. His back had obviously gotten numb to the water pelting away on it.

Wow. That train didn’t even get near the final station and the shower had cooled down. Jay’s brain was still buzzing with what could and couldn’t go wrong when the other ninja eventually arrived. And he still hadn’t come to a conclusion about what to do. With a sigh, the lightning master turned off the water and got out of the shower, quickly drying himself off and getting changed.

“ Besides,” he told himself as he worked, “ it shouldn’t have taken them that long to figure out what I wanted them to do, right? Read a poem and come bring Mr Cuddlywump to the villa. Easy. It’s not like it was some cryptic riddle or anything. They’re probably already here anyway. They’ve all got a key to get in.”

Sure enough, as he was finishing up in the bathroom, he heard the front door opening and closing a short time later. The others had arrived. And that meant that he had to make a decision. Either he went out there and explained everything that had happened all in one go, or he said nothing at all and got everyone mad at him again.

Of course, he couldn’t get his legs to move, though. Even after he was completely ready to face the others… well, physically, anyway. Mentally, he was still trying to figure out what he was going to do. But not even looking at the closed door was helping him sort that out.

The others probably have read the poem. And if they had, then they were going to want answers. Answers for why he didn’t say anything about Nadakhan and so trapping Kai and Zane in his sword. Answers for the times he freaked out about spiders. Answers for what had happened on the _Misfortune’s Keep,_ for the friend in the lighthouse, for the wedding… and the death.

A shudder ran though him as the memories burst to the front of his mind.

“ Jay!” Nya’s voice called up to him from downstairs. “ We’re here! Where are you?”

This was it. He had to open this door, go downstairs and face the others. He had to tell them that he had been an idiot and that because he was an idiot, Kai and Zane got sucked into a stupid sword. He had to tell them what it took for him to get to the lighthouse with Nya and why no one remembers what actually happened.

Finally, he managed to get his legs to move and placed a hand on the doorknob. He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs by that point, though, which meant that the others were looking for him. But he could also hear the pounding of his heart against his ribcage. And despite the fear, he knew what he had to do.

It was time he left the bathroom.

Taking a final deep breath, Jay opened the door… and nearly ran into the mountain that was Cole as he walked out. If it wasn’t for his surprise shriek, Cole probably would have kept walking down the hallway, he was that focused on looking for his friend.

“ Jay! There you are.” The earth ninja stumbled back a little in surprise. A few seconds later though, he broke into a grin. “ We got your message.”

“ Did you bring the messenger?” Jay asked, a little hope starting to twinkle in his eyes at the prospect of being able to sleep that night.

“ Yeah, we did. But we also brought something else as well.”

“ What? Whatcha bring? You didn’t bring a spider with you? O-or a demon sword?”

“ What? No! Why would you think we had a demon sword?”

Jay looked down at the hands he had unknowingly started to wring when his thoughts started to run wild. “ No reason.”

He heard Cole heave a sigh and felt the weight of his arm around his shoulders. “ We’re not going to sneak in any pirate genie people if that’s what you’re worried about. Unless you want us to make you some training dummies that you can destroy, that is.”

“ No, I… I think I can do without those.”

“ Good, because I don’t think Nya would be too happy if we did end up making them.”

At that, Jay had to look up to make sure he was hearing things right. It was Cole who had suggested making the dummies in the first place. Why would he bring up the idea if he was just going to discard the idea like it was dust on his shoulder? Cole just smiled at him in that warm way that meant that he was always going to be by his side no matter what happened just to make sure that nothing bad ever happened to him.

“ But, come on. The others are waiting downstairs and we really need to show you what we got.”

“ I’m serious, Cole.” Jay grumbled slightly despite the smile creeping into his features. “ It better not be a demonic sword.”

Cole could only laugh as he started leading his best friend back down the hallway towards the ground floor. Jay was just going to have to wait until they reached the others before he found out what it was they had brought with them. He just hoped that Jay didn’t get too mad when he found out exactly where they had put his surprise.

He led Jay quietly down the stairs and into the loungeroom where the others were waiting. Lloyd was once more inspecting the trophies on the shelves, unaware that he was making Jay worry that he was going to find the secret room. Kai was on his phone, though, with the look on his face, whatever he was looking at was a serious topic. Zane was showing Pixal around (it was her first time at the villa). But Nya was sitting down on one of the lounge chairs, looking at the book she held in her hands, Mr Cuddlywump snuggled in the chair beside her.

“ I found Jay!” Cole called unexpectedly, forcing everyone’s attention on him. “ Though he seems to think we have a demonic sword with us.”

“ Really, Jay?” Kai asked, turning away from his phone with a confused but also amused look on his face.

“ I do not believe the monastery even has demonic swords within its armoury to pass out to us for whatever reason.” Zane pointed out. “ Nor do I believe that there are any demonic swords anywhere that we know of in Ninjago.”

“ They’re out there. I know they are.” The lightning ninja muttered.

Nya, however, seemed to know exactly what demonic sword he was talking about though and quickly got up to move to his side. “ Don’t worry, Jay. Nadakhan’s sword is no longer in this world. I’m pretty sure it returned to its home realm after you made your last wish.”

“ Good. Because I do not want to go back into that thing.”

That caught everyone off guard.

“ Wait, you were _inside_ the sword?” Kai asked.

“ _‘Into the sword to save them all’_. Did you not read the poem I left you?”

All eyes turned to the book in Nya’s hand. Obviously they had. And with the dark looks on everyone’s faces, they hadn’t exactly liked what they had read. But then Nya was handing him the book, her eyes warm and… a little hopeful?

“ Wha-?” Jay started once he took the book in hand and realised that it was his book of poems… the same one that had that poem in.

“ There’s something in it we want you to read.” Nya said softly. “ At the end… at the end of ‘ _I Should Have Known’_.”

Confused, Jay opened the book, carefully turning the pages so that any loose sheets of paper didn’t go flying out of their places. It didn’t take him long to reach the end of the poems, but he could tell that with each turn of the pages, the others were starting to get nervous. His only guess was that they were scared he was going to get angry at them for writing in _his_ book because it was obvious that they had written something in it.

When he got to the last poem, though, his eyes glanced at the title and he froze. Should he read the whole thing… again… and be reminded of the terror that happened with the sky pirates? Or should he just go to the end of the poem and read what the others had written for him?

His eyes drifted to the first line and before he knew it, they were going further and further down the page. By the time he had reached the halfway mark in the poem, where he was apologising to Kai, his jaw had set itself firmly in his mouth and the knot of dark emotions he always felt when thinking about what happen had returned to his chest. Rereading what he had written about being a prisoner sent little twitches running along his body as if it remembered what it felt like to be attacked by the pirates. A single tear managed to escape him as he remembered what had caused his final wish to fall from his lips.

Only then, as he read the last line of the poem, did he notice the red ink beneath it. The words were written in Nya’s elegant handwriting, but they were placed in a pattern much like the one he had written his poem in. And reading them, he knew that he should have had more faith in his friends to help him through his troubles.

“ We’re all here for you, man.” Cole said solemnly in Jay’s ear. “ Even Kai.”

Jay looked up at Kai at those words, receiving a short nod in reply.

“ We all want to help you.” Lloyd added. “ None of us like seeing you this way. We just… don’t know how to help.”

“ We thought that maybe we had to show you instead of just running around after you and scaring you half to death with everything we did, trying to get you to open up.” Kai added, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“ You mean ‘everything _you_ did’.” Zane sent a stern look over to the red ninja.

“ Okay… everything _I_ did.”

“ But we also need to know the whole story before we can figure out the best ways to help you through your problems.” Pixal explained. “ What you have already told us does not explain much for why you are currently suffering.”

Jay looked down at the poem and closed the book. He didn’t need to keep reading. He knew that it would not do him any favours now. But now that the others had gone and done this for him, he was starting to doubt that he was ready to tell them everything that had happened. Not knowing what to do, he glanced up at Nya, noticing the comforting smile on her face.

“ Well… where do you want me to start?” He asked weakly.

“ Might as well start where you left off.” Kai replied with a small shrug of his shoulder. “ What happened after we got out of Kryptarium?”

Silence passed through the room. This was it. This was where Jay told everyone about the mistakes he made trying to get Nya to love him. This was where the others were bound to hate him for what he had done. Slowly, Jay made his was over to the nearest seat and plonked himself down, resigning himself to his fate.

“ Well…” He started after a few minutes of gathering his thoughts. “ After we got out of prison, we went off to gather information. Zane and Kai were tasked with trying to get the _Destiny’s Bounty_ back, Lloyd and Cole were tasked with looking for Nadakhan’s ship and the map to Tiger Widow Island, Nya and I infiltrated the Police Station to try and get information. Only, we couldn’t get our home back, Nadakhan had already had the _Misfortune’s Keep_ remodelled into a flying ship and… and I was an idiot.”

Nya made her way over to sit beside Jay, placing a comforting hand on his leg. Jay didn’t bother to look up.

“ I thought… I thought that I could use my wishes to get back together with Nya… all because I had seen my future with her in the Tomb of the First Spinjitzu Master. But she made it painfully clear that she only ever wanted to be friends. I should have listened to her; I should have used my head. Instead, I let my heart cloud my brain and left on my own when I knew we should never be alone.

“ That’s when he struck. I tried to get away from him. Guess I didn’t try hard enough. He got into my head and I wished I wasn’t born in a junkyard and that I wasn’t poor and could give Nya anything she wanted. Next thing I knew, he was gone and the postman was handing me a letter that said that my father had died.”

A small, dry laugh escaped Jay’s lips, breaking the silence that had quickly fallen over the others. He didn’t look up from the spot on his lap that he had been staring at all this time, though. He didn’t want to see the looks on his friend’s faces as they digested what he was telling them. But now that he had started, he was starting to find it hard to stop.

“ What you saw a few weeks ago, when my parents came over and told me I was adopted… that was nothing. I panicked so hard when I first read that letter. I thought my dad really had died. I rushed to the Junkyard like the Great Devourer was on my tail, and when I burst through the door and saw only my Mum… I thought the world was going to open up underneath me and swallow me whole. But Dad was fine and the world didn’t want to swallow me up.

“ Then the bombshell was dropped, I found out I was adopted then I came here and checked the place out. And, of course, I was alone here. So, guess who showed up again. Nadakhan. He was getting into my head again and before I knew it, I wasted my second wish by not wanting to be alone with that creep. That’s when Nya showed up, Nadakhan disappeared and… and I lied. I lied so hard that I didn’t mention a word about what had happened to anyone and claimed that I had saved up for this place when I clearly hadn’t.

“ If I had just opened my dumb mouth for once in my life instead of just panicking about saying the word ‘wish’, you all would have known that we needed to stay together. So when we made the plan back at Yang’s Tavern, the one where we charged the pirate ship that was flying through Ninjago City, I teamed up with Kai. We got separated by a stupid explosive barrel the pirates threw at us and Kai, being his usual self, ran off to get the lantern, because, you know, that seemed to be the only thing on everyone’s mind at the time.

“ I tried to get him to stop, tried to get him to see that it was a bad idea. We had to stay together. But Nadakhan got to him and I could do nothing. I was too late. I managed to tell the rest of you that he had gone off alone once we had gathered at the meeting place, no surprise, no one liked the news. So I brought you all here to look at the map.

“ Cole figured me out though and kinda made me promise that I’d tell the others if something else bad happened. Of course, idiot me had to go and break it when we got stranded on that stupid island.” Jay dropped his head into his hands, pressing his palms into his eye sockets as he attempted to squeeze the memories out of his brain. “ We got on Cliff Gordon’s yacht, sailed into a storm where Zane was told to go inside and I was used as a human lightning rod, lost Zane in the storm, and crashed into the very island that we were looking for. We lost two great ninja in one day all because of my stupid mistakes.”

Nya’s grip on Jay’s leg tightened ever so slightly as she attempted to calm her boyfriend down. All it did, however, was make Jay feel worse. With fear and determination fighting each other within him, Jay got to his feet and made his way over to the trophy stand. The other ninja could only watch on in confused worry as he pulled on a specific trophy and waited for the hidden door built into the wall to slide open.

Lloyd’s jaw dropped at the discovery of the hidden room. He knew there was something fishy with those trophies. But Kai’s jaw dropped when he managed to catch a glimpse of the shrine that was dedicated to the blue ninja, his mind trying to work out how Jay’s ZX gi had managed to be the centrepiece of the whole shrine. It made him wonder if there were any other missing ninja garments floating around Ninjago, just like Zane’s pink gi and now this one.

Jay, however, ignored their astonishment and charged right into the secret room, grabbing something that had been resting on the other side of the blue ninja shrine. When he came out, he had a rather thick book in his hand and refused to look anyone in the eye. He dropped the book on the table in front of where Nya was sitting with a loud _thwack_ and pointed viciously at it.

“ That book saved my life.” He growled. “ It got me into so much trouble, but it saved my life. I should never have read it, never have tried to follow its examples, but I did, and because I did, I lied about seeing Zane in the ocean while the rest of us had washed up on shore. Because of my stupidity, Cole took it upon himself to explain what I had told him about having been with Nadakhan before both Kai and Zane were taken. Cole, Nya, Lloyd, you were all angry at me and forced me to go into the spider’s lair. So I went. I was petrified, but I went. We had to get the venom after all.

“ You wonder why I have a fear of spiders. Let me tell you, you’d have one too if you were forced by your friends to milk the fangs of a giant spider the size of a house that is trying to kill you with the very venom you are trying to extract from it. Did I mention that one drop of the stuff is enough to kill a man? I swear, my life literally flashed before my eyes while I was in that cave, not before like I had said. So that book saved my life. And, of course, the giant spider didn’t like me shoving a book up its fangs, or milking it for its venom, because it started to chase me off its island. And let me tell you, the bridge it chased all of us onto did not like having four ninja and a giant spider on it because it collapsed, and the stupid djinn tried to get me to make my third wish. When I wouldn’t play his game, he made me fall before grabbing me mid-air and dislocating my shoulder, drained my canteen and made me think I had gone through all of that for nothing, then he whisked me away to his accursed ship.”

Finally, Jay turned away from the other ninja, trying to settle his breathing. His story was getting to the point where he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop the memories from haunting him. Already he could feel the panic pressing onto his mind. If he continued, he was bound to break down in front of the others. And he was not willing to become that kind of mess.

Right now, he had to get away.

He made it to the lounge room entrance way before someone stopped him.

“ We’re sorry.” Cole’s hand landed on Jay’s shoulder in an attempt to keep him in the room. “ We were too hard on you and we realised that as soon as you were gone. It’s one of the few things that I remember… sort of. I remember a beach and being with Lloyd and Nya… and even though I don’t exactly remember why I was mad at you, I know I was too hard on you, so… I’m sorry.”

“ So am I, Jay.” Lloyd added, taking a step towards the blue ninja. “ I might not remember what it is Cole’s talking about, or, admittedly, what you’re talking about, but I never would have wanted you to go through all that.”

“ You don’t know the half of what I’ve been through.” Jay muttered to himself darkly, shrugging Cole’s hand off his shoulder and making his way back up to the second floor.

Once more the others could only watch him leave, wishing they were able to help their friend a lot more than they were able to give at that moment. They all noticed the slight limp in his movements, as well, just like that first night when Kai had put on the pirate movie. Cole especially heard the darkness in his friend’s voice before he had taken off, his heart clenching in fear at what Jay had meant.

The earth ninja was almost tempted to turn around to Nya and demand an explanation to what had happened to his friend, but he knew that she would just turn him down again. Besides, he didn’t think she knew what had happened after Jay was captured by this djinn Nadakhan. Not that he didn’t have faith in her… it was just Jay seemed to be keeping this a tightly locked secret from everyone. There was a high possibility that he had kept it from her as well.

With a sigh threatening to escape him, Cole turned back to face the rest of his team. Zane and Lloyd both had concerned looks on their faces. Pixal had taken to sitting next to Nya who was looking at the book that Jay had slammed in front of her. And Kai had his usual determined look on his face.

It was that look which scared Cole.

Usually, when Kai had that look on his face, it meant trouble. He would more often than not go off and do his own thing before anyone could stop him. And once Kai got something in his head, you could bet he was going to find a way to make it happen. Seeing that look now, Cole worried that he was planning on doing something that would inevitably push Jay further away from them than he already was.

“ We’ve got to do something.” Kai said once more.

“ Like what, Kai?” Nya asked, an edge to her tone that no one could place. “ You started this by putting on that pirate movie. I mean, yeah, we were going to tell you all what had happened eventually, but you pushed it to the point where we kind of had to tell you. What could we do that isn’t going to break Jay more?”

“ I don’t know! Not leave him on his own, I guess. I mean, what if he’s suicidal? Someone’s got to be here to stop him before he does something to himself.”

“ I can’t believe you went there.” Cole said softly.

“ Oh, come on. We’re all thinking that he could hurt himself if this keeps up.”

“ You were just the one to actually speak up about it.” Nya sighed. “ But Jay’s not going to do that. He promised me he wasn’t going to do that.”

Pixal put her hand on her friend’s shoulder, silently giving her comfort that she didn’t know she was seeking. That small movement, however, seemed to push Kai into action because the next thing anyone knew was that he was making his way out of the room, an even more determined look on his face.

“ Don’t do anything stupid, Kai.” Lloyd warned.

“ Who me?” the red ninja replied a little too innocently. A number of warning looks were sent in his direction. “ Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in a less than an hour, if I rush.”

“ Where are you going?” Zane asked, curious but also wary at the same time.

“ Just going to pack a bag. I’m gonna stay the night. You guys should too, just in case.”

With that said, Kai disappeared out of the villa, the sound of his dragon coming to life the only indication that he had left the area completely.


	10. chapter 9

The first thing Kai did when he got back to the villa was get into his swimsuit and hunt down Jay. He didn’t care that Jay had left his own swimsuit back at the monastery. He was going to do something about the depressed state that his friend had seemed to get himself in. And if that meant dunking said friend in the pool… well, Jay was going to regret ever helping Kai get over his fear of water and actually learn how to swim.

Cole, Zane and Lloyd were next to gather their things from the monastery, waiting until Kai had returned before leaving themselves. Though they did have to explain to Master Wu what was going on with his disappearing students… and why Lloyd was holding a beach ball. Apparently, the green ninja had liked Kai’s idea and had decided he needed to join in for once.

In fact, while Zane veered off further into the city to get some groceries (he had noticed there wasn’t much at the villa when it came to planning that night’s meal), Cole and Lloyd had actually raced each other back to the villa. Almost as soon as they had returned and relayed their master’s words, they were also changed and in the pool, pulling Jay back into the water where he was trying to escape from something Kai had done.

By the time Zane had returned, he had in hand, not only his day pack, but also a small number of bags filled with groceries he would need for the next few meals. Nya had already taken Pixal back to the monastery to get their things, making the master of ice wonder where everyone was going to fit for the night.

That thought running through his head, he quickly placed his day pack with Kai’s, Cole’s and Lloyd’s packs in the lounge room before turning to the kitchen and placing the groceries on the island bench. He even made sure to place the cold foods in either the freezer or the fridge depending on their needs. Once he was done in the kitchen, Zane headed out to the poolside, trying to decide if he should join his friends or not.

“ Hey Zane!” Cole called, tossing the beach ball over Lloyd’s head to where Kai was waiting with his arms in the air. “ Come on in, the water’s fine!”

“ Well… it is getting late… and I should actually start dinner soon. I just came to make sure that Kai and Jay knew we were allowed to stay for the night as long as we did city patrol later.” The master of ice replied.

“ We know, buddy.” Kai said, tossing the ball over to Jay who was still in his day clothes.

“ And we already told the girls before they left to get their things.” Lloyd added. “ Now get in here so I can have a turn of the ball.”

“ But…” Zane’s thoughts were even more divided than the others first realised because it showed, bright as day, in both his voice and his features.

“ Don’t worry about it, Zane.” Kai called again. “ The sun isn’t even setting yet. We still have plenty of time to have fun and have dinner before we go on patrol.”

“ Come on Zane!” Lloyd begged again before successfully catching the ball Jay threw at Cole and forced the blue ninja into the middle of the triangle.

“ We could change the game if you want.” Cole stated with a shrug of his shoulder.

There was a definite _splash!_ as the beach ball sailed over Kai’s head and landed on the water, it’s intended target giving the black ninja a pained look that rivalled that of an injured animal. That same look was also on Lloyd’s and Jay’s faces. When Cole noticed this, he grimaced slightly, knowing that they were all having fun just playing piggy in the middle but also knowing that it wouldn’t be that fun a game when there were five playing.

Well… they could probably make it work. As long as they didn’t pass to the side too often. Plus, it would be fun watching the ‘piggy’ struggle with trying to catch the ball. And the outside ring would have to move more often to keep the ‘piggy’ guessing. Yeah… maybe it could work.

“ You know what, just get in…” Cole started before being cut off by a sudden tunnel of water wrapping itself around Jay.

“ WAH!” Jay managed to get out as he was lifted into the air and dumped on solid ground beside Zane.

All anyone could do was watch as Jay spluttered out the rather small amount of chlorinated water that had managed to enter his mouth. Before Zane could help his friend up, though, Jay was on his feet staring, wide-eyed at the culprit. Nya just looked smugly at her boyfriend, already in her swimsuit and holding out Jay’s folded one towards him.

“ You might want to change into something more suited for a pool and not a rescue mission.” She said with a smile.

“ But it is a rescue mission!” Kai objected from within the pool.

Jay just looked down at his drenched clothes. They were so dark with water they were clinging to his body like they had some kind of magnetic attraction to him, all the while practically leaking water. To be honest, there was no point in changing now.

“ Nah.” He said, looking back up with a goofy grin on his face. “ I’m already waterlogged thanks to these idiots behind me always dunking me. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.”

That said, Jay turned around and jumped back in the pool.

It was good to see the happy Jay back and splashing around like the goofball they all knew. A few days of moping and hiding were a few days too many for the others to bear. Nya turned and placed the swimsuit in her hand carefully over the edge of the empty spa before making her way over to the poolside and easing her way into the water.

“ You know, I’m actually surprised Kai is in the water.” She said, letting herself sink up to her chin in water.

“ I told you, it was an emergency.” Kai grumbled. “ I had to do something and if it meant getting wet then so be it.”

“ I’m still not sure what that emergency actually is.” Jay muttered.

His response was to get splashed in the face by the red ninja as if the answer was clear just from that. Cole just started laughing, also getting into the water fight, while Lloyd turned back to Zane to try and get him in the pool again. It wasn’t long before both Pixal and Zane gave up and went inside to change into their swimsuits, returning a few minutes later to join in on the pool activities and revel in the happiness that was enveloping Jay.

\---

It was another hour and a half before the ninja and samurai managed to haul themselves out of the pool and wash off the chlorine one by one. Zane took the first shower, aiming to have dinner ready by the time the last shower was finished. Pretty soon, the warm smell of spicy goat stew had claimed the house within its grasp. And within another half hour, seven stomachs were happily digesting the hearty meal.

During dinner, they all decided on what they were going to do about patrol. Kai would check the sector that housed Ninjago Park for any trouble, Cole would take the sector which housed the museum (only because Kai kicked up such a big stink about doing patrol there). Nya offered to take the area around the main shopping hub with Jay being in the next sector over. The two wanted to be as close to each other as they possibly could in case something happened. That left Zane, Pixal and Lloyd with the remaining three sectors.

They had also set a time for when patrol was to start and finish. Nine o’clock. That would give them three hours of patrol in order for them to be back at the villa by midnight so they could get a decent night’s sleep. But until nine o’clock came around, the others really had nothing to do. And no one was going to pester Jay into telling more of his story.

Cole went over to his day pack, digging out a number of movies that he had brought with him. None of them were pirate movies, thankfully, but two of them were quickly vetoed because they both had genies in them. It was a shame because Cole was really looking forward to watching Ducktales.

Lloyd somehow managed to fit an entire stack of comic books into his day pack and still have plenty of room his clothes and other essentials. But when no one wanted to read the comics with him, he went and sulked by the Fritz Donnegan statue. There was no moving him from his spot after that. He just quietly read his comic books and practically ignored everyone until the time to leave came around.

It was a little odd to see him act this way now, seeing as he tried not to give in to his more childlike tendencies. But at the same time, times like these were slowly dwindling and the others were beginning to miss them. It was only proving to them that the boy they had first met was still growing into the body the Tomorrow’s Tea had given their younger brother. And this was despite the fact that Lloyd had started acting more like the teen he now was almost as soon as the change had happened.

Kai didn’t even think to bring anything due to the fact he still hadn’t figured out how to get a game console attached to the hidden television on the wall. And he was just a little too proud to admit to Jay and Nya that he couldn’t figure it out on his own. Especially seeing as he knew Jay, at least, had bet on him not being able to work it out at all. Lloyd and Cole were probably in on the bet too, knowing them.

Zane, however, took the liberty to bring a multi-game board set. Games included chess, checkers, backgammon, Ninjago checkers, mah-jong and several other games the others didn’t know about. The nindroid even had a deck of cards with him. So, with the games and the movies, everyone seemed set for the few hours they’d be spending just waiting for nine o’clock to roll around.

Jay stuck around for a quick game of mah-jong with Zane, Pixal and Nya while Kai and Cole fought over which movie (that wasn’t Ducktales or some Southern Ninjagian take on Aladdin) they were going to watch. Unsurprisingly, it was Pixal who won, but no one seemed to mind. Once the game was over, the blue ninja slipped upstairs, deciding to use this time to try and find out more about his unknown family.

Walking into the baby’s room at the end of the second-floor hallway, the lightning ninja moved the recently added step stool over to the bookshelf and took out the photo album that was marked with his name. He quickly found where he was up to in the book (a couple of pictures showing the day he had been allowed to go home for the first time) and went over to the rocking chair. Carefully, he took the letter from its place once more and began to reread it, hoping this time he didn’t fall asleep.

_My dearest BlueJay_

All the letters he had read so far had started with that, whether they be from Libber, his mother, or from Cliff, his father.

_Today was the day you came home. You were still such a tiny baby though that may be because you were born premature. But you were a month old and had gained the weight needed to bring you home. And your father and I couldn’t have been prouder._

_Of course, you slept through the whole ordeal. You slept through the doctors poking and prodding at you to make sure you were ready to come home. You slept through the entire car ride home with all the lumps and bumps in the road. You even slept through the commotion your father caused when he tripped up the stairs and fell against the wall, knocking down a number of photo frames with the shattering of glass._

_What did wake you up was the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. The bath wasn’t even for you! But I’ll tell you now, as soon as I heard your cries, I had the water turned off and you in my arms as fast as the lightning that courses through my veins. I honestly thought that something bad had happened. But it turned out you were just hungry._

_Though I think I scared your father with how fast I had reacted._

_Your daddy knows about the lightning, but every now and then he seems to forget and gets surprised whenever something like this happens. I’m also not sure if he realises that I could lose my lightning. I haven’t yet, but if I do lose it, I would rather you inherit it and not someone steal it. I’ve seen what happens to people who have their power stolen and it’s not pretty. Though, they may have already been insane before it happened so I can’t really judge._

_But you don’t want to hear about my dangerous past. You just want milk and sleep… and your nappies changed. Oh, to be young like you, so innocent of the dangers in this wide world. I hope you never get to see those dangers. I hope that all you’ll ever know is love and friendship and the hidden wonders that life brings._

_Love always,_

_Your lightning mummy._

Libber always signed off with those words. Cliff always finished with something along the lines of ‘be brave’. It was also Cliff who usually tried to explain that Libber was ill because his letters were usually done when she was in hospital. To be honest, it was Cliff who wrote the first letter to his then unborn child.

According to Cliff, the pregnancy had been a surprise… a welcome one, considering the fact that Libber found out she was quite ill only a few months prior to the discovery. That first letter was mainly the young actor trying to figure out how things could be happening so fast and him promising to always be strong and brave for his ill wife and unborn child. But as his letters progressed, it was clear that Libber was getting worse even throughout her pregnancy.

Sensing the worst, Jay placed the letter back in its place before continuing to look through the photo album.

Of course, the next picture he saw was of a very confused baby looking at his rather sick looking mother pulling a face at him while holding some kind of stuffed animal. The toy was blue and looked like it had been through the wars. It had a missing leg, a missing eye and the opposite arm looked like it was about to fall off as well. But with the tender look in Libber’s eyes, Jay had a feeling that it had once been her toy and, despite its obvious flaws, she was hoping to pass it on to her son.

There were lots of photos of baby Jay with his mother. Libber feeding Jay, Libber playing with Jay. There was even one photo where Jay had obviously just had his nappy changed because he was lying on the change table, gumming at his hand and smiling up at Libber who was, once more, pulling faces at him. With all the face pulling, Jay was starting to wonder if he got his humour from his mother.

But there were photos of Jay with Cliff as well. Cliff rocking him to sleep in the rocking chair, Cliff looking like he’d just jumped out of bed while feeding a hungry Jay, Cliff pretending to be some kind of animal while Jay was lying on his back on the floor playing. There was even one photo that Libber had snapped with both her boys asleep in the rocking chair. It was actually kind of cute.

But one that really stuck out was a photo of Cliff dressed up as a pirate for Day of the Departed holding a crying two-month-old octopus and looking like he had no idea what to do with his own son. In the background, at the top of the stairs, stood a confused looking Libber in a blue mermaid costume and holding a brown haired six-month-old who, despite also looking confused, had his tongue sticking out. Judging by the slightly spiked hair (even at that age) and the amused looking woman to Libber’s right, the Smiths were also at the villa.

Maya looked stunning in what could only be a goddess costume. She was wearing a form-fitting white gown with gold accents. Her hair was done up in a partial braid, similar to Libber’s, and was also accented with gold ribbons. In her hands was a little black cape which was obviously part of Kai’s costume. Now that he was actually looking, Jay noticed that six-month-old Kai was wearing a red and black suit with a bright orange tie shaped like a bat.

According to the letter that came with the image, the family was heading up to the monastery for a Day of the Departed party with all their elemental friends. Ray, Maya and Kai had all stayed over at the villa for the night at the request of Libber who had wanted to help her friend with choosing a costume seeing as Kai and Ray were both going as some kind of monster. And to think, none of the babies going to the party would realise it would be the first time they would meet their future teammates.

And to prove that the three boys had met each other at the costume party, a photo was taken. It was a weird photo, though. Vampire Kai had one of Jay’s octopus tentacles in his fist and was holding it up to his open mouth. Once more, Jay was crying. Though, judging by the scowl on the panda bear’s face being directed at the vampire, Cole was not pleased by what Kai was doing to Jay.

“ Jay?” a voice called from the bedroom door, snapping Jay out of his thoughts.

“ Huh?” Jay started, looking up. “ Oh, Nya. It’s just you.”

“ What are you doing up here?”

“ Just trying to piece together my past… again.”

Curiosity crossed the water ninja’s face as she made her way into the room. With a smirk, Jay showed her the pictures. True, he was a little embarrassed to show her his baby pictures, but he had the chance to show Nya what her older brother looked like as a six-month-old. He wasn’t going to give that up… especially when Kai could do nothing about it. Cole the panda was an added bonus.

Nya’s eyes sparkled at the images before her and a smile tweaked at her lips. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the crying baby, and though Jay’s face was slowly getting redder as he realised just who she was looking at, she couldn’t help but give a little coo at the images.

“ You look so cute, Jay!”

“ I thought I looked scared. In both photos.” He admitted ducking his head.

“ That too. And… is that Kai eating one of your tentacles?”

“ Sadly, yes. Though I think Cole isn’t too happy about it. He looks like he could thump Kai despite only being six months old.” Jay then pointed to baby Kai from the first photo. “ Did you know your brother hated me from the time he was six months old, himself?”

“ He was poking his tongue out at you? Oh my gosh!” Again, Nya couldn’t help but coo.

“ Geez, I didn’t think I’d get this much reaction out of baby pictures.” The lightning master muttered to himself as he got up out of the rocking chair.

He was about to put the photo album away when Nya grabbed the book from his hands. Startled by the sudden motion, he looked at his girlfriend in confusion. Nya was looking intently at the top photo – the one with his mother holding her brother – all happiness gone from her face. Instead, concern and worry took place over her features.

“ Your mother…” Nya’s voice was but a mere whisper. “ She was so strong when I met her. She looks so weak now… even weaker that when she had taken you home. What happened, Jay?”

Gently, Jay took the photo album from his girlfriend’s grasp and closed it. He didn’t reply until he had returned it to its place in the bookshelf.

“ I still don’t know exactly what happened.” He sighed. “ What I do know is that she got really sick before I was born. Next thing Libber and Cliff knew was that Libber was pregnant with me. If she wasn’t sick, I probably would have gone full term, but as it was, I was in danger as well as her, judging by what Cliff’s letters are saying.”

“ Oh, Jay.”

“ Hey, is everything okay up here?” Lloyd’s voice penetrated the room as he poked his head in the doorway.

“ Yeah…” Jay started as he and Nya turned to face their leader. “ Yeah, everything’s fine. What’s wrong?”

“ Nothing. It’s just time to head out on patrol.”

“ Right.”

Lloyd led the two back downstairs before meeting up with the others in the foyer and briefing everyone for the patrol, reminding them of who was going where and to make sure they called in if anyone spotted anything out of the ordinary. Of course, there were a few remarks (mainly from Kai) about what to do, but everyone knew it was good-natured teasing and so didn’t take much notice of it.

Before long, the team was out the door and summoning their dragons (or samurai x suit in the case of Pixal). One by one, the elemental masters took to the sky with Lloyd being the first to leave the villa to get to his sector. Cole, Nya and Jay took off not long after, with Kai heading off on his own shortly after them. Zane opted to stay with Pixal until her mech suit had arrived, taking off with her and only turning towards the docks once he had escorted the female nindroid to her designated sector.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much going on in Ninjago City that night. No bikie gangs tried to cause chaos. No burglars tried to steal anything. Heck, no one tried to hurt anyone. In fact, it was a fairly uneventful patrol… not that anyone was complaining. But there was at least one break in and there were definitely a few odd shenanigans going on around the place.

Zane caught some late-night fishermen having an argument over the best types of bait to use over at the docks. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the docks were a no fishing zone. The three men were gently ordered away from the docks as Zane suggested another area not too far away that was safe for fishing.

All Jay got were a couple of rebel teenagers, a few years younger than he was, sneaking into the local high school grounds with bags full of spray cans. It was clear that they didn’t like school and were planning on showing their distaste for the place by graffitiing it. Jay had even heard the kids planning that they were going to ‘trash the side of the gym with their principal by turning her into a gorgon’ or something along those lines.

For their troubles, the blue ninja decided to freak them out a bit. First, he commandeered a loose spray can or two and watched as the kids started getting confused. When he started taking their bags, they started freaking out. Of course, he returned the bags… just not the spray cans that were in them. By this time, the kids were starting to think the place was haunted. One of them even suggested they leave. That was when Jay decided he had to show himself.

“ You know, if you’ve got a talent for art, why not do something professional with it, instead of ruining public property and getting yourselves in trouble?” He said once his feet had touched solid ground. “ I mean, you could do art classes, teach younger kids how to be great artists, maybe even make a profit out of your work. Speaking of which, if you got permission from the right people, you may even be able to brighten up the city for a few, well-earned bucks, instead of just sneaking around the place and trashing things by disrespecting your own talents.”

The only response he got was two teenagers freaking out big time about the school being haunted by ninja ghosts. In fact, they both went quite pale at the sight of the ninja before them. One of them even fainted despite realising that Jay was not a ghost… though that was probably because he thought he was going to go to prison seeing as how he was caught by one of the ninja. The other kid promised not to even think of graffitiing anything ever again and waited for his friend to wake up before they both ran off with their empty bags, clearly scared beyond belief.

Kai had a strange one though. He was circling Ninjago City Park when he noticed a horse happily grazing near the titanium ninja statue. Being as bored as he was at the time, he didn’t take much notice at first, but he did have to do a double take to make sure what he was seeing was real. Sure enough, the horse was real… and seemed to be glaring up at the red elemental dragon that had disturbed its feed.

The red ninja blinked before slowly raising his hand to his communicator. “ Zane, what are the rules on horses in Ninjago City Park?”

 _“ I don’t think the mayor has sanctioned any rules concerning horses being allowed in the park, actually.”_ Zane replied, though he sounded a little perplexed at the question. _“ There are no signs posted around the park that state that a horse should not be seen within. As far as I am aware, it is okay for a horse to pass through as long as they do not loiter around for too long. Why do you ask?”_

“ Because I am legit looking at a horse right now. It was eating the grass by your statue. Now it looks like it’s daring me to move it.”

 _“ Have you tried moving it?”_ Nya asked, though she sounded like she was trying to hide her incredulous tone.

“ Nya, I am riding my elemental _dragon._ You know, big, glowing red beast with sharp teeth and giant wings that it’s currently using to stay in the air. This horse isn’t even _phased_ , I’m telling you. The only form of movement it has done is step closer to the statue.”

 _“ Why don’t you call animal control or something to move it for you?”_ Cole’s voice sounded over the coms-link. _“ Or are you scared it’s going to kick you or something?”_

“ I’m not scared, Cole!” Kai couldn’t help the growl that escaped his throat. “ I just… don’t know what to do with it.”

 _“ Surely it hasn’t just wandered into the city on its own.”_ Zane was clearly trying to figure things out as well. _“ Perhaps someone is with it and that’s why it refuses to move from the statue. Maybe check just in case.”_

“ Yeah, I’ll check.”

Kai went offline after that. It wasn’t until later, when they had all gotten back to the villa, that he explained why he had a massive bruise forming on his forehead. He had landed and checked around the statue only to trip over some small form lying on the ground. Turns out that form was a sleeping boy… and the horse thought Kai was attacking its master and so had slammed its head into Kai’s. The boy had been so apologetic about what his horse had done, and about having a horse in the park in general, that as soon as he was sure Kai was okay, he had saddled the horse and left to find a new sleeping area for the night.

After Kai went offline, Nya landed her own dragon on the roof of a random shop down one of the streets in her sector. Something shadowy had almost instantly caught her attention while she was trying to understand her brother’s situation. And she did not like the way they were looking in the windows of all the fashion shops that were lining the street.

But it was weird, too. Whoever it was that was roaming around did so in such a fluid motion that it reminded Nya of how a serpentine would walk. Next to that, their choice of garment was more some kind of ratty bedsheet that had been somehow fashioned into a hooded cloak. And even then the cloak didn’t work too well because the decent sized holes in it clearly showed what looked like purple and black scales… which was weird considering the only purple serpentine she had seen were Pythor and the Anacondrai Cultists. And Pythor had been bleached white thanks to the Great Devourer, while most of the Anacondrai Cultists had met their demise at the Corridor of Elders.

 _“ Is everything alright in your sector, Nya?”_ Lloyd’s voice crackled over the coms-link. It was about time for a check-in.

“ I’m not sure.” She replied. “ I’ve got this shady guy peeking through all the windows in the fashion stores down Regalica Lane, but I can’t make out exactly why he’s doing it.”

 _“ What do you mean?”_ Jay asked, clearly confused by her words.

“ It almost looks like the guy or snake or whoever is window shopping late at night and with a really shoddy homemade cloak over his face.”

 _“ Wait, snake?”_ Lloyd was back.

“ The cloak has holes in it and I can just see black and purple scales through them. You can thank the streetlights for the glint they’re producing on the scales.”

 _“ But the only purple snakes we know of are Pythor and the Anacondrai Cultists. And we all know that the majority of Chen’s followers suffered during the Battle of the Corridor of Elders. Not to mention those that weren’t part of the battle were quickly dealt with and are now in prison where they belong.”_ Zane had joined in the rather confusing conversation.

 _“ Not to mention, Pythor is white now, so it can’t be him… unless he’s somehow figured out how to regain his colour.”_ Jay put in.

“ Yeah, but why would Pythor be window shopping at clothes stores?” Nya asked.

 _“ Maybe he’s got some kind of weird plan going on in his head? I don’t know!”_ a few minutes of silence from the blue ninja then, _“ Oh great, now I’ve got an image of Nadakhan posing as me stealing a picture of Chen running down a street full of fashion stores with Pythor who keeps stopping to ogle at all the dresses.”_

 _“ Thanks, Jay. I really needed that image.”_ Kai grumbled, which was followed by a number of agreements to that statement.

Nya wasn’t sure what do to about that. On one hand, it was making her question what exactly she saw in Jay what with his random oddity. On the other hand, she could just completely ignore it and focus on doing her job. She chose the latter, calling in and saying that she was going to keep an eye on this shady figure and try to figure out what was going on.

Turns out, there wasn’t much to see. Nya’s mystery guy continued to ogle at all the clothes shops. Occasionally, he would reach into the cloak for something and start working on something in his hands (almost like he was drawing something) and then went back to scrutinising the coats and dresses.

After a while, he sat on a bench under a streetlight and took something out from under his cloak again. Nya wasn’t exactly sure if it was the same thing or not, but her mystery guy sat almost as still as a statue holding whatever it was. He was like that for quite a while before making his next move and returning to the sewers without much issue, indicating that he probably was a Serpentine that didn’t want any trouble.

But the most concerning thing that happened that night was the break in at the museum. And after that small call in with Kai, Cole had gone silent. It took Lloyd a number of times before he was able to get onto the black ninja, and that alone was starting to worry the others. What if Cole was in trouble? What if he needed help? Pixal and Lloyd had to both threaten to go charging into his sector to find Cole when he finally decided to answer.

“ I’m fine, guys. Don’t worry.” The black ninja tried to sooth despite his hushed tone. “ There’s no need to come after me. I’ve just been tracking someone I don’t like the look of.”

 _“ Okay, please tell me they’re not a four armed, orange guy that floats and goes poof when he moves, has a hook for a hand and has a long ponytail as his only hairstyle that can turn into other people and likes to steal creepy paintings from the museum while disguised as a certain blue ninja that you know.”_ Jay’s paranoia was returning, and it was clearly obvious.

“ Not unless that creepy guy you’re talking about happens to be a girl with long dark hair and carrying a rather large backpack.”

_“ Did you not hear the part where I said he could turn into other people?”_

“ I heard. But I’ve been trailing this kid for a few blocks now and there was no poofing to places or changing into anyone while I was watching. I think you’re safe from evil pirates, Jay.”

 _“ Jay, Nadakhan is stuck in a teapot that has been lost. He is not going to be anywhere around here. You don’t have to worry.”_ Nya’s voice came over the coms-link.

Lloyd decided then was the best time to steer away from Jay’s paranoia, _“ Can you tell us anything else about this girl, Cole?”_

“ Other than the fact that she just climbed in through a museum window and has somehow managed to turn off the security system, I can’t say.” Cole replied.

 _“ Wait, how do you know that?”_ Paranoid Jay was back.

“ I followed her to the window and watched her turn off the security system. Haven’t gone in yet, but I am trying to keep an eye on her, see what she’s actually planning.”

 _“ Well, if you do go in there, be careful. If you need any help at all, don’t hesitate. That goes for getting out of there safely.”_ Lloyd’s hidden permission was clear as well as his concerns.

“ You can count on it.”

With that, Cole slipped into the museum.

He didn’t find anything. He had no idea how, but he didn’t find anything. It was almost like the girl had just disappeared. Even stranger was the fact that nothing seemed out of place in the museum. Okay, maybe some oddities had been stolen from the museum gift shop like some tote bags, a working torch or two, a swiss army knife that had been locked up and, surprisingly, a pair of scissors from behind the counter.

But there was a small pile of coins sitting on the counter in an apparent attempt at paying for everything. And nothing major had been taken from the main exhibits. It made Cole wonder exactly what was going on. So, he scoured the museum at least three times, just in case he missed anything the first few times he had tried.

Not even the security guards could find anything when he had told them about what he had seen. So, when Cole returned to the villa nearly fifteen minutes later than the twelve o’clock deadline, he walked in with quite a perplexed look on his face. He explained what he could of what happened – and tried to ignore Jay’s panic as he started rambling freely about pirates – before setting up his sleeping bag in the lounge room.

Of course, the black ninja was the last to actually go to bed that night and even then his thoughts of what had happened during patrol kept him awake for at least an hour or two more.


	11. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some answers into what I believe Jay’s past was like. But it also comes with a warning. There is mention of attempted suicide and attempted murder as well as alcoholism and death. My apologies if any of this triggers anything in my readers. This is merely what I believe happened when Jay was a baby.

Cole woke up early the next day despite only having managed to get a couple of hours sleep. He wanted to go back to the museum for another sweep in case he had missed something the night before. Zane was also up at the time, having awoken himself once he had sensed that Cole was awake, so Cole told him of his plans as he munched on a breakfast bar the nindroid had brought the day before.

Before anyone else had woken, though, the black ninja had gotten himself ready for the day, rolled up his sleeping bag and was out of the villa.

Sadly, due to his worry, he missed the blueberry pancakes that Zane made for breakfast. The others, however, were up and in the kitchen almost as soon as the delicious scent had reached their senses. So, it came as a shock to all when they didn’t find Cole the first one sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for pancakes.

“ Where’s Cole?” Kai asked as he stepped into the kitchen.

“ His sleeping bag was rolled up, too.” Lloyd added, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“ Cole has gone back to the museum.” Zane explained calmly as he flipped a pancake on the steadily growing stack and starting on another.

“ What? Why?” Jay asked as he and the girls came down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“ He’s afraid he may have missed something in the dark last night and so went back to see if anything was amiss before the museum doors opened to the public. He shouldn’t be gone too long, though. I made him promise to only do one complete search of the building and to contact us if anything serious arose or if he decided he was going to check out the swamp area that Krux and Acronix had made their base of operations in.”

Kai gave a soft sigh as he planted himself on the nearest chair. “ Please tell me we don’t have to worry about him as well as Jay.”

“ And what is that supposed to mean?” the lightning ninja asked roughly.

“ It means the rest of us may have to go on another rescue mission.”

“ You mean like the so called rescue mission you did yesterday when you threw me into the pool or the kind where we actually do have to rescue someone?”

“ Jay, yesterday’s rescue mission was important, too. If you want to go around sulking, we may have to have another mission like that. But if Cole is in trouble, what kind of rescue mission do you think we’d be doing?”

Jay narrowed his eyes at the fire ninja as he moved to the seat furthest from Kai. Obviously, he no longer trusted him… at least for the time being. Kai merely watched the blue ninja evade him, a smirk placed firmly on his face and a glint in his eyes that clearly said that he was going to dunk his friend back in the pool if only he got that little bit closer.

Of course, Jay wasn’t the only one who noticed that devilish glint. Zane had just turned around to place the tower of pancakes on the table in front of everyone and clearly noticed the look as well. And the look on his face as he turned around clearly said that he was not pleased with whatever plan Kai had playing in his head.

“ I’m sure we have nothing to fear.” He said, his tone clearly telling Kai off. “ So there should be no need to plan any rescue missions.”

“ Besides, if he’s not back in a few hours, then we’ll go after him.” Lloyd added, ending the conversation. “ Right now, there are pancakes to eat. Pancakes made by Zane.”

That said, the green ninja piled a small stack of pancakes onto his plate and snagged the maple syrup from the table. A few seconds later and those pancakes were practically drowning in the sugary syrup. Both Zane and Pixal had a moment of worry for their young friend’s health at the sight of the amount of syrup he had on his pancakes.

Nya, Kai and Jay just ignored the swimming pancakes, with Jay asking for the syrup himself. In fact, the meal was mostly quiet… except the looks that Kai and Jay were throwing each other. Those looks spoke volumes.

Kai was clearly watching the blue ninja for any signs that he was going to start pulling away from his family again. He wasn’t joking when he said that he would willingly start another rescue mission similar to the one he had started the day before. And by the look on his face, he was hoping Jay would slip up just so he could throw him back in the pool.

Jay, on the other hand, was clearly suspicious about what the fire ninja was planning. He was practically eating with one eye on Kai and the other on his food. And he was watching every little move that Kai made like a hawk.

Of course, Kai would test the boundaries. Every now and then he would feint a move like he was going to pounce on Jay and throw him into the pool right there and then. And every time, Jay would flinch in preparation for what would never occur. Not to mention, every time it happened, Kai would start laughing and continue to eat his breakfast while either Nya or Zane berated him for being so mean to Jay.

Lloyd and Pixal wisely stayed out of it, choosing to ignore what was going on between the red and blue ninja… though Pixal seemed to be doing a much better job at ignoring the scene than Lloyd. The green ninja was finding it hard to keep a straight face at his brothers’ antics.

As soon as breakfast was over, Jay disappeared. It was clear he was trying to keep away from Kai, but it was proving a little hard to do seeing as Kai followed suit almost as quickly. Zane, as always, had to make sure his fellow ninja were safe and ended up calling out to them about _not_ swimming so soon after eating. Unfortunately, he got the feeling that his advice had fallen on deaf ears.

Even so, both he and Lloyd quickly went in search of Kai in an attempt to wrangle him away from Jay. As much as they all enjoyed the fun they had in the pool the day before – and enjoyed the fact that Jay was enjoying himself as well – it would not do to have Kai frighten off their friend in his attempts to ‘help’. This left the girls to clean the dishes.

They found Kai and Jay in the upstairs baby room, the former trying to drag the latter out of hiding. Jay had attached himself to the edge of the bookshelf with Kai trying to pry him off by pulling at his waist. Though, judging by the smiles on both boys’ faces, there wasn’t much force in the pull. The two were just mucking around.

“ So, should we pull the two of you apart or…?” Zane asked after a few minutes of watching his brothers’ antics.

“ No, get him away from me!” Jay squealed. “ He’s gone crazy!”

“ But you look like you’re having fun.” Lloyd smirked.

Kai just laughed. “ See, Jay. No one wants to see you cooped up in this baby’s room for the rest of your life. You need to be exposed to the terror of brotherhood. You need a taste of your own medicine.”

“ But I’ve done nothing wrong!” Jay made a show of managing to take a step forward.

“ You’re going to sulk again. I know it.”

“ I’m not sulking! I’m trying to find out why I was abandoned by my birth parents!”

Instantly, the mood took a nose drive. Smiles disappeared off faces. Kai sobered up instantly and slowly loosened his grip from around Jay until it was gone altogether. Jay pulled himself way from Kai, sensing the mood shift around him. He didn’t have to turn around to know that all three boys behind him were feeling for him at that moment.

“ I’m getting close to figuring it out.” He said a lot softer than he had first spoken. “ I can feel it.”

“ We didn’t realise that you were searching.” Lloyd said quietly. “ You know we would have helped if you had told us.”

“ Yeah. But I found out by accident. I was looking through my photo album when I came across some letters that my birth parents had placed in there. Those letters have been telling me a _lot_. I mean, if it weren’t for those letters explaining things from the photos, I would have never found out the name of my biological mother or the fact that I was named after her father. And just yesterday I found out that Kai, Cole and I met each other for the first time when we were babies at some Day of the Departed party at the monastery.”

“ We did?” Kai asked looking quite perplexed.

“ Apparently.”

Before anyone could say anything else on the matter, Jay disappeared into the room to grab the photo album in question. He quickly turned to the page he had last turned to the day before when Nya and Lloyd had both called him to patrol duty, then quickly dashed back out to the others. But it wasn’t until Kai had taken the album from him that he realised his mistake and his face glowed bright with embarrassment.

Zane and Lloyd practically gravitated towards the album, moving to either side of Kai to get a look at what Jay was showing them. And, much like Nya before them, all three of the boys gained a slightly softer expression to their features… though Kai did try extremely hard to fight it. In fact, he was smirking at the images before him.

“ Heh, so I had cool hair even as a baby.” Kai muttered to himself, mainly looking at the photo where he was trying to eat one of the tentacles of Jay’s octopus costume.

“ It also looks like you had it out for Jay.” Lloyd stated, also looking at the photo. Then his eyes drifted up to the photo that had been taken in the villa of Jay screaming his little lungs out at the sight of his father’s costume. “ And maybe Jay had it out for his dad.”

“ Perhaps the pirate costume scared him and that was why he was trying to escape Cliff Gordon.” Zane supplied. “ Some young children have been known to be frightened of familiar faces due to not being able to recognise who they actually are.”

“ Either that, or Jay just didn’t like pirates.” Kai opted.

Jay felt himself bristle slightly at that comment. “ I was two months old. I was allowed to cry at my father. You had no right eating me, though.”

“ Well, I was six months old. I was obviously hungry. And you should know that babies that age will grab anything and put it in their mouths.”

“ I’m actually surprised that it’s you trying to eat the octopus costume, Kai, and not Cole.” Zane said.

Lloyd nodded his head in agreement, a cheeky grin on his face. “ Yeah, he looks like you stole the last bit of cake.”

“ He does, doesn’t he.” Kai agreed before turning to look at Jay. “ Are you sure it was wise to give us this?”

“ I didn’t give the album to you, Kai.” The lightning ninja grumbled. “ You took it from me before I could show you what I was talking about. And now I want it back.”

“ Nup. Not getting it back.”

With that, Kai took off down the hallway with Lloyd close behind him. It was clear that the boys were planning blackmail with those pictures. And Jay was not pleased about it. Without a second thought, Jay was after the both of them, yelling out threats he may or may not follow through with once he got his hands back on that album. Zane could only sigh in defeat as he watched the three of them running around the house.

“ How did something like this not happen with Jay’s book of poems?” the titanium ninja asked himself as he carefully made his own way back downstairs.

Somewhere along the line, Jay’s book of poems did end up in Lloyd’s grasp. And as soon as Jay realised his dilemma, he made his way into the foyer and plunked himself down on the seat there, glowering at anyone who walked past… especially Kai and Lloyd. With both of them now running in opposite directions, Jay didn’t know who to go after. He wanted to go after both of them.

But after one fateful pass made by Kai, Jay noticed something slip from the pages of the photo album. His anger sedated for now by curiosity, he made his way over to the kitchen doorway where the object had fallen. Unsurprisingly, it was another letter. But what was different about this letter was that it was encased in a yellowed envelope… and it had his name written on the front in Cliff Gordon’s distinctive cursive.

Returning to his seat, Jay carefully opened the aged envelope and pulled out the pages that had been safely kept within. But he froze at just touching the paper. It was almost like he could feel that the words the letter bore were bad news. And it didn’t help that his heart had started to beat at a slightly faster rate at the thought.

Finally, after a few minutes of convincing himself that he needed to read what had been written, he unfolded the pages.

_Jay._

With just that one word, just that one name, Jay knew that this letter was not going to be like the previous ones. He knew it was going to be dark and probably sad. And he knew it was going to tell him everything he needed to know.

_If you are reading this, then I have either died and you have found this letter while claiming your inheritance, or I have finally plucked up the courage to show my ugly face in your life once more._

_First, please know that your mother and I both loved you so very much even though you may think otherwise. And I know that Libber would be rolling in her grave right now for what I did to our dear BlueJay._

_Secondly, know that I tried my hardest to be the best father I could for you. I won’t lie, it was hard without your mother around. And I know I should have tried harder… but that leads me to my last point._

_Jay, please find it in your heart to forgive me. Forgive me for what I did to you. Leaving you was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. But I know I had to… if only to protect you._

The blue ninja grew confused… and a little scared. Why would Cliff Gordon give him up and say it was for his own protection? Unless…

_Yes, Jay. You heard right. I, Cliff Gordon, loving father to his only son, loving husband to the beautiful Libber Gordon nee Shecnak, broke down and tried to destroy what was left of his life… what was left of his love. I’ll try and explain as best as I can because I’m sure you would want a less confusing answer._

_When the cancer finally took your mother, I was devastated. The first week without her, I spent roaming the place like a zombie. I think, as a two-month-old, you could sense that something was wrong because the only time you didn’t cry was when I somehow managed to get you to sleep. Not to mention I was the only one you would let near you. No matter how many nannies I brought into the house to help look after you while I somehow got paid, you would do everything in your power to get rid of them, including electrocuting them._

_You had gained your mother’s abilities over lightning, after all. I remember the day before your mother died. She had woken up from a dream screaming about seeing you and claiming that she had lost her lightning. As soon as she had you in her arms, she calmed right down. It was like she could sense that you had inherited her powers. To prove it, you had raised your tiny fist at her, and to my surprise, it was sparkling with raw electricity I had only had the chance to see your mother harness once. The doctors, of course, went into a panic, but Libber merely smiled so brightly it rivalled the glow of your tiny fist. Before I left, she told me that I had to protect you until you were old enough to go to the monastery on your own._

_Guess I didn’t do a good job of that. She died that night, you know, and I think she took a part of both of us with her._

_After the first two weeks of your nonstop crying and bad habits towards the nannies, and my ghosting through life and my responsibilities, I somehow managed to get some help from a few unlikely friends. You seemed to like them, too, so I counted that as a blessing._

_The first was Maya Smith. She would often bring her son, Kai, over for play dates and would often help me around the house as well. She and her husband, Ray, were good friends of your mother and both were equally upset about what had happened. But they lived all the way out in Ignacia Village, and that was quite a trek. Because of this, Maya didn’t come ‘round often._

_Then there was Isa Brookstone. Like Maya, she was a friend of your mother and would also bring her son, Cole, with her. She also didn’t live in Ninjago City and so couldn’t make it as often as she would have liked. But she was closer than Ignacia. In fact, it was Isa who could see I was starting to lose myself after your mother’s death. She warned that if I did anything to you that would break my final promise to her friend – and Maya seconded this when she got word of it – she would come in here and take you off me to protect you from me._

Upon reading that part of the letter, a lump formed in Jay’s throat. And a hard one at that. His mother had died of cancer and his father had essentially flipped. He wasn’t exactly sure how hard Cliff had flipped, but something told him he would find out if he kept reading. What got him the most, though, was that if Kai’s or Cole’s mothers had found out how badly Cliff had lost it, he was sure he would have been a real brother to either one of them. He would have either become a Brookstone or a Smith.

Honestly, he didn’t know what to make of it. He couldn’t really picture himself as anything but an engineer, an inventor. A dancing Jay Brookstone or even the blacksmith Jay Smith both sent his mind reeling at the thought. But, still, he forced himself to read on.

_The third person you took a liking to was a lovely older woman by the name of Edna Walker. Like Libber, she could talk your ear off, but she had the sweetest nature. She was working as a part time nanny and didn’t seem to mind at all that you would quite happily electrocute anyone you didn’t like. To be honest, I don’t think she believed me when I said that. Especially when you didn’t do any lightning tricks around her._

_Dear Mrs Walker lived out in a junkyard in the Sea of Sands with her husband, though I’m sure you know that. They were having a bit of trouble with the junkyard which was why Mrs Walker had decided to get a side job babysitting. She adores kids. But after her third visit, I locked everything up and broke contact with everyone._

_It was then that I tried to end everything. You were almost three months old at the time and had woken up crying. I was in such a depressed state that night that I had… made a new friend for the night. The strongest bottle of alcohol I could find. I don’t exactly remember how much I drank, but I couldn’t handle your crying. I remember going into your room and I remember grabbing a blanket or something. I know what I was going to do… but then I looked into your eyes._

_Have you ever been told that you have your mother’s eyes? Probably not, but you do. I think… no, I know, that’s what saved you. When I looked into those deep sapphire eyes, I knew what I had to do. So I raced to write down a couple of notes, found your mother’s old house key, wrapped you up ready for travel and took you all the way to the junkyard in the Sea of Sands. Of course, I have no idea, to this day, how I managed to do everything. But even then, I knew I had left you in the care of some good people._

_When I got home, I did everything I could to end my miserable life. I know this because I was told later on. But I woke up in the hospital, didn’t I. Poor Isa found me the next day. She was so mad, but I made her promise to leave you where you were. I guess she must have considering the blue ninja is a Mr Jay Walker and not a Mr Jay Brookstone._

_A lot of things happened while I was in the hospital, the most important of which was Edna coming to make it official that you were now her son. She questioned it, I admit, but even I felt a lot safer knowing that you were with her. But I still suffered. I tried numerous times to end myself, but something always stopped me. I guess, in the end, I finally got what I deserved._

_Jay, you were too good for me. You and your mother both. As soon as I realised who the blue ninja was, I followed your progress, watched your achievements constantly and realised how great a man you became without me. You’ve probably noticed the shrine in my dressing room. I made that to honour you and to remind myself of the failure I turned out to be. You were never a failure in my eyes, in fact you were the farthest thing from it, so don’t go thinking anything like that._

_Jay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you couldn’t get a better father than me and again I hope that you can forgive me in some way. May your true family continue to support you and protect you in the ways that I never could._

_Be strong, stay safe and never forget that, no matter what you think of me, I will always be proud of the man you have grown up to be._

_Cliff Gordon._

He didn’t sign off like he had in the past, Jay noticed. He had signed off using his full name. But after finishing that letter, the master of lightning felt numb. The knot in his throat was so hard he could barely breathe and the papers he held fluttered to the floor, away from his grip. How could he react to something like that anyway? Cliff Gordon had tried to kill himself… his father had tried to kill _him_!

The world started to spin around him. He felt things moving around him, but he couldn’t make out what they were. Even sound was muffled in the weirdness of his mind. Before he knew it, darkness started to take over. The last thing he remembered before he was engulfed was feeling like the papers he had held in his hands as he toppled over himself.


	12. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set before season 11. You’ll understand why I say this when you read the second half of this chapter.

Cole was just walking into the villa when he noticed Jay sitting in the foyer. He wouldn’t have minded it if it weren’t for the fact that Jay was so still and had papers strewn about in front of him. And the fact that his friend looked so pale didn’t help the bad feeling that was starting to form in his gut.

“ Jay? Is everything…” He started to say, carefully walking over to his friend.

He got his answer when Jay started to tilt dangerously forward.

“ Jay!”

In a flash, the master of earth was by his friend’s side and holding his limp body up. At that moment in time, he was thankful that Zane and Nya had both been adamant about all the ninja learning first aid. Carefully, he placed Jay on his back, moving the pages out from underneath him and gently raising his legs.

“ Woah, what’s going on in here?” Kai’s voice penetrated Cole’s worry, making him look up.

Kai was coming out of the lounge room, having been stirred by the commotion he had heard in the foyer. Beside him stood a worried Lloyd. And in their hands were books that Cole knew belonged to Jay and thus knew that Jay wouldn’t want them snooping around in. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had Jay to worry about.

Speaking of Jay, he was just starting to wake up. One of his hands made its way up to his forehead as he moved his legs back down off the seat that Cole had leaned them against. Cole’s focus instantly went back to Jay as he slowly helped the lightning ninja up into a sitting position. It was only mid-morning. He didn’t want any more bad things to happen.

“ Cole?” Jay asked quietly once he had regained focus. “ What are you doing here?”

“ I just came in from the museum. And just in time, too. I walked in and you fainted on us.” The black ninja replied, his concern clear on his face. “ Is everything okay?”

“ I… I… The letter. Where’s the letter?”

“ The papers? There’re right here.”

Cole picked up the papers he had cleared from around Jay and handed them over. Jay took them with shaking hands. He shuffled the papers back in order before his eyes finally landed on the part of the letter he was looking for. After a few minutes of rereading the part about him gaining his power a few times, he turned to face Kai with a slightly helpless, slightly terrified look in his eyes.

“ The album, Kai. Give me the album.” He ordered.

If nothing else, the look in Jay’s eyes was enough for Kai to pass over the photo album. Once it was in hand, Jay turned to the page where he had been dressed as a blue octopus that ended up being eaten by Kai. He hesitated long in enough for Cole to recognise who the majority of the people in the photos were (including himself dressed in the panda suit) before he took a deep breath and turned the page.

Jay had hoped that there would be more baby photos between the Day of the Departed photos and the photo he knew would be the last one in the album. He almost prayed that there had been a little more time between the two events. Instead, the next page held what he was dreading.

It had been taken around three days after the party, judging by the dates in the corner of the Day of the Departed photos and the photo he now had in front of him. It only meant that she had gone quickly which he had hoped. But still, seeing that photo brought things crashing to a halt in his head once more.

Libber was in the hospital, looking even sicker than she had in the photo where she was dressed as a mermaid and holding a baby vampire named Kai. How that was possible in the few days since then, Jay didn’t know. But even Kai had to swallow at how drawn with illness her face looked. And yet, despite the sorrow that the photo was bringing, she had one of the brightest grins that any one of the boys remembered seeing ever.

And that grin was directed solely at the little baby boy she held in her arms. A two-month-old with her eyes and freckles and his father’s hair who held his tiny fist up to his mother’s face. And running over that fist were the tell-tale streams of electricity that everyone knew Jay had harnessed within him.

The baby’s face was hidden from the camera, but something told Jay that he had been smiling; wanting to show his mother what he could do despite being so young. And the amount of pride that swelled within the older, sapphire coloured eyes was enough to tell anyone that she didn’t care what was going to happen to her next now that she knew her son would live. But deep down, Jay could tell, Libber knew that she wasn’t going to make it through the night. There was just something dark hidden in her eyes that told him.

Just looking at that photo, though, Jay hoped that Libber was proud of what… no, _who_ he had become. It was probably just a moment of weakness talking, but with everything that had happened to him in the past, he had been starting to feel a little useless again. And he wasn’t sure if he could forgive Cliff just yet, if ever, for what he had done. He wasn’t sure if he could believe the old actor’s words of pride and pleas for forgiveness.

Unbidden, a tear rolled down the blue ninja’s cheek and landed on the plastic that protected the last ever photo of his mother.

“ Jay?” Cole asked carefully, trying to show that he was there for his friend but not sure how to go about it.

“ You know she died that night.” Jay replied, no emotion in his voice. “ Cancer took her. According to Cliff.”

It was Kai who took the risk in saying what he said next. “ What do you mean by that? I mean with the last part. I… don’t know what to say… about your birth mum.”

“ Well… I’m… I’m not sure what to think of Cliff now. Not after what he did.”

“ But you were just as much as fan of him as Lloyd is. What changed?”

“ He snapped. Libber died and Cliff completely lost his mind. He… he tried to…”

Cole placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him. “ You don’t have to say it.”

A small smile managed to cut across Jay’s face. He had a feeling that the others had a pretty good guess as to what had happened judging by his reaction, but he couldn’t make himself tell them. And despite knowing what he did now, he wasn’t too keen on shattering something else in Lloyd’s life. That boy had had it rough from the get-go. He didn’t need Jay’s crumbling world to slam into his own and disintegrate it further.

Slowly he got to his feet, Cole standing by him in case he needed the support after his collapse. It was at that moment that Zane, Nya and Pixal seemingly materialised in the area by the kitchen doorway. It seemed Cole’s concerned cry of Jay’s name had called them to the foyer as well as Kai and Lloyd, but the three of them had kept back once they had found the blue ninja in Cole’s care.

As soon as Nya heard what had happened to Jay’s mother and the implications of what had happened to Jay as a baby, what his father could have done, tears sprang into her eyes. Combine that with the knowledge that something bad had happened on Nadakhan’s ship and the fact that he had gone insane while he was in the First Realm and she was truly worried about the safety of her boyfriend’s sanity, if not his life. A part of her was also beginning to wonder if the entire ninja clan had terrible luck with everything in their lives.

“ I’m going back to the junkyard.” Jay declared softly, not looking anyone in the eyes even as his voice broke through their individual thoughts.

No one made any move to question him about his choice. No one stopped him as he made his way back upstairs to gather his things. No one seemed to move from the foyer after the discovery of what had happened to his birth mother and what could have happened to him. He discovered that when he returned downstairs a few minutes later to find everyone still in the foyer. It was like his friends were channelling how he was feeling on the inside at that moment.

And, yet, everyone realised that he needed the time to digest what had happened, what he had found out.

After a few more minutes of processing what was happening, the others managed to move, gathering their own things and cleaning up after themselves. It wasn’t long after that that the villa was lifeless once more. Though Jay did manage to wait for the rest of the clan to exit the door before locking up, he was quick to call upon his dragon and head towards his childhood home and his true family.

Worried about their friend, the other ninja had no choice but to let him go. Ed and Edna would be able to help Jay a lot more as parents than what they could do as friends, no matter how much they wanted to be able to help.

Nya especially felt troubled with figuring out how to help her boyfriend. She understood that there were things that she would not be able to help with – dealing with the discovery of what happened to one’s biological parents, for instance – but she also wished to be given a chance. She wanted Jay to know he could trust her and know that she wouldn’t turn her back on him again like she had in the past. Right now, though, it felt like Jay was stepping away from her. And she could tell that the boys felt the same way.

But no one mentioned anything as they all called upon their dragons and took off back home to the monastery, Pixal riding behind Zane. They were all trying to figure out what to do, after all. And when Master Wu questioned where Jay was once they returned home, no one could discern the look he gave them. Was it one of understanding or disappointment? Or was it neither? Either way, it was almost like he could sense that his students were all affected by what Jay had discovered, so he gave them all some time to try and work their own minds out before afternoon training began.

And even then, afternoon training managed to help them all focus their minds on what was going to happen. It was almost like the old Spinjitzu master was purposefully training his students on how to cope with the mental dangers that the team was exposed to. What could happen and what to do if they ever found themselves in a situation much like Jay had found himself in. And, more importantly, how to help someone with what was going on in their own heads.

Still, though, everyone wanted to know how Jay was coping and what they could do for him.

* * *

Jay didn’t return home to the monastery until a week later. But he arrived home smiling. It wasn’t his usual beaming grin that he used to wear, but it was a lot happier than he had been lately. And it warmed the hearts of everyone who saw it.

He also had in hand some small figure that looked to be a mishmash of junk. On closer inspection, it looked to be one of Kai’s old action figures… minus a leg and half an arm. Unsurprisingly, the hair looked to be as good as new. The missing leg looked to be replaced by a crafted piece of metal from an old cake cooling rack and a carved cork foot. The missing part of the arm also sported a piece of cooling rack metal, but a hook replaced the hand that had once been a part of the action figure. The figure was dressed in a black, sleeveless coat and matching black pants (though the pants looked to be painted on).

What was weird though, was that one of its eyes now sported an eye patch and the other looked like it had been swapped for a tiny flashlight or something. To be honest, it was a little freaky to look at… especially for Kai, who had been surprised to find that the action figure was one of his and had been thrown into the junkyard. But Jay had been determined to strap it to the end of his bed so that it was facing the door.

The figure’s purpose became known that night when Kai had awoken to Jay screaming out his name. As he charged down the hallway, he was able to make out the slightly softer scream of the blue ninja trying to tell him that ‘they had to stay together’… though, exactly why, he had no clue. All he knew, as he practically ripped open the door to Jay’s room, was that something was happening to his friend. And he was going to find out what… if it weren’t for the fact that, as soon as the door was opened, he was immediately stopped by a bright light shining in his face and a terrible noise that he couldn’t put a name to ringing in his ears.

“ What in the… Jay? Are you alright?” Kai almost had to yell over the noise to be heard, it was that loud.

Jay was quick to turn on the lamp on his bedside table and hurried to turn off whatever was blinding and deafening the rest of the monastery once he had managed to catch his name being called. But even so, it took him a little bit to realise who it was who was standing in his doorway. Eventually the stunned look on his face melted into one of relief, surprise and was that embarrassment?

Either way, now that he wasn’t being blinded or deafened, Kai slowly made his way into the blue ninja’s room. He still wasn’t sure what Jay was going to do to him or what other things he had created would pop up and scare the fire out of him. Not that he was scared or anything. He was just highly aware of the fact that he wasn’t the only one who Jay had woken up with his new alarm system and so he didn’t want anyone knowing of his fear levels.

“ Care to explain what the action figure is for, now, Jay?” he asked, trying not to sound too harsh.

Jay still managed to visibly deflate at the question, but still he managed a reply. “ It’s supposed to be a pirate deterrent. For if any pirates come to kidnap me or one of you guys, you know. If a pirate tried to attack, it would alert everyone and everyone would come running and help fight off the intruder because the intruder would be stunned anyway but I guess it still needs some work done to it. It is a prototype after all… or… well, you could call it one and say I was testing it, because I was going to make one for each of you but I could only find one decent action figure in the junk yard and as it was, I had to really scrounge around through the various piles in order to get all the components for the motion sensor and the alert system because they had to be small enough to fit inside the head not to mention I had to fix its arm and leg…”

“ Jay…” Kai was close enough to place a hand on the lightning ninja’s shoulder, effectively getting him to stop talking and finally breathe. “ We get it. You did a lot of hunting and tinkering while you were visiting your parents. And don’t get me wrong; it’s great to see you doing stuff like this again, but I don’t think you need a motion alert detector thing tied to the end of your bed.”

Jay could only look up at him with confusion now making itself known on his face, silently urging his friend to continue.

“ We’re not going to get captured or kidnapped by pirates or whatever.” The fire master continued, discreetly knocking his foot against the wood of the floorboards. “ For starters, we have that new alarm system around the monastery now. Plus, we have an electric chicken. No one in their right mind would go anywhere near that chicken with any intent on harming its playthings. Even if they were its own playthings and they weren’t really trying to hurt each other.”

That made Jay crack a smile before he looked down at his feet, trying to work out why he had forgotten about the chicken. And maybe he was starting to get paranoid. Maybe. But he wasn’t about to admit it just yet. And he would deny it something fierce if anyone ever said that he had been getting paranoid way earlier than that night.

Then the smile disappeared. Almost immediately, Kai started to worry that he had said something or done something wrong to trigger his friend to slowly return to his freaked out, depressive state. But a few seconds later, he realised that Jay’s lips were turned down in that look he usually wore whenever he was concentrating on something.

“ We don’t have an electric chicken, Kai.” Jay said slowly.

“ We don’t?” Kai questioned.

“ No.”

“ Hm. I could have sworn we did. Must have been dreaming.”

“ Why were you dreaming about electric chickens?”

“ I have no idea.” Then Kai gained a dangerous smirk on his face. “ But I think this one’s name was Jay.”

“ What?” It took Jay a few seconds to realise just what Kai was talking about, then… “ I am not a chicken!”

“ You sure about that?”

“ Do I look like a chicken, Kai!”

The smirk only got deeper. “ Maybe if we add some syrup and a ton of feathers and maybe a glove on the head…”

“ Get out of here Kai!”

The smirk smoothed itself out a little into a proper smile as he turned to face the door. The crowd around the door was beginning to dissipate now that they were all sure that Jay was going to be okay. And the encouraging look on Master Wu’s face before he moved to return to his own bed made Kai’s smile brighten just the tiniest bit. But Kai couldn’t help but notice that Nya still lingered, concern being battled into submission at the sight of her boyfriend. He would have to do something about that.

But first…

“ So, we cool now, Electric Chicken?” he asked Jay, turning back to the lightning ninja who was starting to glow pink at the new nickname.

“ I’m not an electric chicken!” Jay huffed.

“ I’ll take that as a yes. Now, try and get some more sleep. If I know Wu, he’s planning some tough training for us tomorrow.” Kai made his way to the door and started pulling it closed before he remembered something. “ And don’t forget to dream of electric chickens!”

The fire ninja managed to close the door just in time before a soft thump could be heard from the other side. And from the grumbling that came shortly afterward, he was pretty certain that Jay had thrown his pillow at him. He turned away from the door with a soft chuckle and turned to his worried little sister. Now it was time to go into big brother mode.

Gently, he took Nya’s hand in his and pulled her into a warm embrace, making sure she knew that everything was going to be alright just through that one act.

“ Don’t you worry, Nya.” He whispered in her ear. “ Jay is going to be just fine. And so are you. We’re going to take care of you. Both of you. And nothing is going to get in the way of us protecting you. Nothing is going to get between me and my hurt baby sister and hurt friend. Now let’s get you back to bed, too.”

Quietly, Kai led his sister down the hallway back to her own room and sat with her on her bed. He would have left once she had gone into the room alone, but something had told him that she needed him with her a little while longer.

“ What if something happens, though?” Nya found herself asking softly. “ What if some creep does manage to get in the way and does something that makes everything worse?”

“ You know I will fight tooth and nail to protect my family, Nya. And that family includes you and Jay and everyone else. Heck, when you were captured by Garmadon and the Skulkin army all those years ago, I swear I would have fought the guys if I had had to, that’s how determined I was then to find and protect you.” Kai reassured her. “ And now, well… the family’s kind of grown, hasn’t it. If I had to, I’d pull a Zane and sacrifice myself if it meant protecting you and the guys… protecting my family.”

“ Please don’t ever let things come to that.”

“ I’ll try, but I won’t make any promises. You know our lives are wacked out enough for something to happen. Good or bad. Right now, though, you have nothing to worry about. I’m here to help… both you and Jay. Even if you think that I’m just going to end up making things worse. But you know me. I always find a way to make things better. Heck, if I’m not going head-long into things, I need to know every little detail so I can work properly.”

“ And get frustrated while you’re doing it.”

“ See, you do know me. So you know that I won’t stop until I know everyone’s safe… even if it means making sure Jay is safe from himself. Now get some sleep. Everything’s going to be alright. That I promise.”

With that said, Kai gently planted a kiss on Nya’s still worried looking brow and left for the comforts of his own bed. He may have grown out of the more physical heart-to-hearts with his sister, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t dust one off every now and then when he knew his sister needed it and he needed to be there for her. He just preferred it if no one else was there to witness those more tender moments.

But now sleep was tugging at his mind once more. As he made his way back to his own room, he couldn’t help but keep an ear open for any sounds of disturbances in the night, be it a disruption of sleep or any possible intruders. But there was none. Not from down the hallways and especially not from Jay’s room.

For now, everything was safe. Kai just hoped, as he lay back against his pillow, that it would stay that way for quite some time.


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight graphic warnings apply to this chapter thanks to one of the wounds I believe Jay had inflicted upon him while he was with the sky pirates.
> 
> On a side note, Kai has the same problem that I do when it comes to pronouncing Monkey Wretch’s name. For a long time, I always thought that they were saying Wrench instead of Wretch. It took me actually looking up the character to realise what his name actually was. Whoops.

Kai had been right when he said that Master Wu had been planning some intense training for the next day. The old spinjitzu master was, as always, banging his little gong down the hallways of the monastery when not even the sun was up yet. It was almost like being back on the _Bounty_ in the early days of ninja life.

Rolling out of bed and somehow managing to get dressed before trudging out to the training area made each one of the ninja begin to feel nostalgic for days past. Somehow, even the early morning training routine was similar to what they remembered doing despite the different location. And, of course, Zane’s hearty breakfast was near identical to the ones he used to make so long ago (even if he usually made bacon and eggs with toast and tomatoes on a regular basis).

In fact, the entire morning seemed reminiscent of the old days. There was meditation after breakfast (which included Jay nearly falling asleep again), then they all had to run up and down the steps to the monastery twenty more times on top of the usual amount of forty because Jay had been caught dozing off. Thankfully, they were allowed a good hour and a half to recuperate from the task before being thrown into kata techniques… but they did have to make sure at least half an hour of that time was spent sharpening their minds and strategizing over various things.

Once everyone was well rested (according to Master Wu), they were all sent back down the mountain for their agility training. The only catch was that training had to be completed in the treetops. Needless to say, no one was very happy about it… especially when the drop to the ground would most likely be painful upon impact considering how tall the trees were. And that was only because Master Wu had already managed to mark the path (or the circle) on the ground.

Throughout the entire time of training, no one could figure out how he had managed to mark the trees in such a short time. Nya suspected that he had used his elemental dragon or else he had gotten Pixal to mark the trees before going wherever she was going, seeing as she was mysteriously absent from the monastery that day. Though, regardless of how he had done it, lunch seemed to be waiting for them by the time the ninja returned, clearly battered and bruised from having to fight with the very trees they had run through.

Unfortunately, only five of the ninja returned to the monastery once training was over. Jay had left during training with a noticeable limp to his right leg. The only problem was that no one had been sure if it was because he had fallen and landed badly on his ankle or what had happened. And the fact that the lightning master wouldn’t let Zane or anyone else look at it only worried them more.

What was even scarier was that, when Nya had only tried to help and understand what had happened, Jay had gotten quite defensive over his mysterious injury. It had gotten to the point where he had actually snapped at her. But before anyone, least of all Kai, could do anything to defend the Master of Water, Jay had realised what he had done and had quickly disappeared into the trees.

And, of course, Master Wu was quick to notice when the five spent ninja walked back through the monastery gates without Jay.

“ Oh man, what are we going to tell Master Wu?” Cole asked quietly, running a hand through his hair as he and the others entered the temple for lunch.

“ Tell me what?” that was when Master Wu seemingly materialised in front of them.

“ I… uh… that is, we…”

Zane placed a hand on the Master of Earth’s shoulder to help settle his thoughts before speaking himself. “ We angered Jay during training, Master Wu, and he ran off. Now we can’t find him.”

“ Oh? And what happened to get him angry at you?” their elder asked.

“ He, uh… he was limping.” Cole managed to get out at last. “ And we pushed him to tell us how he’d hurt himself. We thought maybe he’d fallen out of one of the trees or something.”

“ But then I had to go and open my big mouth and mention the _Misfortune’s Keep_.” Nya groaned, obviously angry with herself over what she had done. “ He snapped at me again then ran off as best he could on his sore leg. Master Wu, I didn’t mean anything bad when I mentioned that ship. I just know he gets phantom pains every now and then because of it… even if I don’t know why.”

“ Peace, Nya.” Master Wu raised his hand and gently made his way over to where she stood in order to place it on her shoulder. “ I know you are all trying to help Jay. You especially, Nya. And I believe you are doing him a great favour. Try not to worry too much, though. By helping talk things over slowly with Jay helps not only him, but I can tell that it’s also helping you. Even so, I think you should go help Jay with lunch, Nya. I have requested some kind of protein with a berry and nut mix, but I think Jay is having a little trouble trying to figure out what berries and nuts to add to the mix… or was it the meat he was having trouble deciding over?”

“ Of course, Master.” With a bow, Nya headed into the kitchen, determined not to mention what had happened in the forest.

Kai started following, just to make sure that everyone was going to be safe – and by everyone, he mainly meant his little sister – but he was quickly stopped by a stern voice.

“ No, Kai. I think you’ll find that Nya can handle this alone. I have another job for you instead.” The fire ninja turned to face his master. “ I would like you and Lloyd to get the training grounds ready for the afternoon training session.”

“ Yes, Master.” Both boys bowed in reply to the task… though Kai was a little hesitant at first.

“ Do you mind if I ask what you’re planning, uncle?” Lloyd asked.

“ Not at all. We will be sparring in close quarters, but I would also like there to be a boundary to simulate having to defend yourselves against group attacks that are not in your favour.” The old man explained.

“ But we haven’t done anything like that in ages.” Kai spoke up.

“ At least not since that one time we faced off against the vermillion warriors while we were trying to stop the time twins. And even then, we were not all together.” Zane added.

“ Precisely. I feel you need a refresher in defence patterns now that you have all remembered the basics behind spinjitzu.” Master Wu nodded before turning to the two remaining ninja. “ Zane, Cole, if you could, could you two please make a list of things everyone could do to help Jay be as comfortable as he once was here in the monastery and with all of us around. Maybe read up on what can be done to help someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while you’re at it. It might give you some ideas on what to do.”

“ Yes, Master Wu.” The two replied, also bowing.

“ Now, I think I’ll go and help with lunch.”

Just as suddenly as he arrived, Master Wu was heading back into the depths of the temple, specifically towards the kitchen. His young students could only watch him leave. They were all still trying to figure out what had happened within the last few hours. Kai, especially, was trying to figure out why he wasn’t tasked with anything to do with helping Jay like Nya, Cole and Zane. He knew he was capable of helping Jay make lunch and he was capable of trying to work out what activities everyone could do with him, especially if it meant helping him.

Cole, on the other hand, was fighting internally with himself. True, he had already started making a list on everything he knew Jay liked and would like to do. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he couldn’t help but feel that Master Wu’s training plan was a bad idea. At least, concerning Jay. He was pretty sure that everyone would benefit greatly from the lessons, though… even Jay, if he wasn’t currently such an emotional wreck.

Not to mention, ever since the old spinjitzu master had mentioned what he had planned for the afternoon training session, he had been getting a strange image of Jay wearing an eyepatch floating in his head. And it wasn’t a pretty image either. It was somehow clear that his best friend was in a lot of pain if the broken look on his swollen and bruised face was anything to go by. Cole just didn’t understand what had happened… or even where this disturbing image was coming from.

“ Cole? You okay buddy?” Kai’s voice snapped him from his thoughts.

“ Yeah.” He sighed slowly.

“ Are you sure? You seem troubled.” Zane queried.

“ It’s just… something doesn’t feel right.”

Instantly, all focus was on the black ninja. It was true that he didn’t have any sort of sixth sense like Zane had, but when Cole started feeling like something was off, you listened. Especially when he had that serious look on his face.

Cole took a deep breath before answering. “ It’s just… maybe we shouldn’t be doing this now, especially not with Jay the way he is at the moment.”

“ What do you mean?” Lloyd asked, voicing what Kai and Zane seemed unable to.

“ Well, I’m getting this weird picture in my head where I see a battered and bruised Jay with an eyepatch and is barely able to walk. I don’t know why I’m getting it or even what it’s a memory of, because it’s clearly a memory of some sort. And don’t get me wrong, I think this kind of training would be good for all of us. I just… don’t think we should be letting Jay get involved. Something’s telling me it might be too much for him.”

They were all silent as they let Cole’s words sink in. Of course, none of them could figure out why Cole was having such a strong, and disturbing, memory at the mention of Master Wu’s training plans. But it only served to escalate the worry that each one of them was already feeling. They knew ninja life was rough, but how rough had it been for their light-hearted friend for his own mind to suddenly turn on him?

“ Oh, man.” Kai grumbled, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. “ I wish we knew what was wrong so we could help Jay already!”

“ We do know what is wrong, Kai. Jay has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Zane stated.

“ Yeah, but why does he have PTSD? That’s what I want to know. Because that’s what’s going to tell us what we need to do to help him.”

No one could answer. They didn’t have one to give. And nothing seemed to want to come to mind to help with their dilemma, either. Instead, they were all forced to head into the kitchen area for lunch when Nya’s call reached their ears. And despite being asked about their solemn moods upon arrival to the table, none of them could manage to get the reason out of their mouths to explain.

Cole was especially reluctant to mention anything about his weird thoughts while Jay was around. And it was easily noticeable with the way his eyes would land on Jay’s form and his face would twitch into a confused and worried expression before he’d quickly turn away. It was actually starting to make the lightning ninja feel uncomfortable… even if he didn’t know why.

And of course, once lunch was finished, Kai and Lloyd disappeared into the training grounds to complete the task that Master Wu had given them. Not to mention Zane had also gone off in search of something, effectively leaving Cole alone with Nya and Jay in the kitchen. And when Cole realised what had happened, he quickly and silently made his exit once the couple’s back had been turned to do the dishes.

Jay had been hoping that Cole was still in the room when he finished with the dishes, he had to admit. But he really should have known better. Now he was the one trying to hunt down Cole and ask about his odd behaviour. And it was really starting to frustrate him because he was more than certain that his best friend was trying to avoid him.

Finally, the lightning master managed to corner the earth master as they were heading out to the training area… and Cole did not look happy about it.

“ Hey, Cole. What’s up?” Jay asked, noticing how his best friend instantly cringed at the sound of his voice.

“ What’s up with what?” Cole asked, trying to appear innocent.

“ Well, you were giving me weird looks all throughout lunch. And you’ve been avoiding me ever since. Only me. Your best friend! Did I do something wrong?”

“ No, no. I just… I’m just trying to work out this vision I keep seeing. Nothing major… I hope.”

“ It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”

“ Like I said, Jay, I’m still trying to work it out myself. So don’t worry about it. But we better get outside before Wu comes after us.”

Before he could be questioned any further, Cole walked out of the temple and made his way over to where the rest of the ninja team were standing in front of the circle that Lloyd and Kai had marked. Jay could only follow, knowing that Cole wasn’t going to open up any time soon… and that Master Wu was not going to be pleased with them being late. As it was, the old master gave them both a questioning look when they arrived, but he didn’t say anything.

Only, as Jay got closer to where they were going to be training (for some reason, Kai and Lloyd had chosen to make a fighting ring against the mural wall), he started to get a bad feeling in his stomach. Not to mention, Cole’s feeling also worsened, but it was mainly the worried look on his friend’s face that helped with that.

“ It’s not Scrap ‘n’ Tap.” The older boy heard Jay mumble to himself as he got into line.

“ Jay? Are you okay?” Cole asked softly.

“ It’s not Scrap ‘n’ Tap.”

“ Jay?”

“ It’s not…”

“ Jay!”

Jay was snapped out of his trance at the sudden call of his name. Taking deep breaths to settle himself from the slight scare, he turned towards where he had heard the call. Almost instantly, he noticed the worried faces of his friends. Cole’s was the most severe having been the one who had called, but the rest of them also had confusion mixed in with their worried looks. Even Master Wu had worry strewn through his wise gaze. And all this worry was starting to form a knot in his chest because he knew that this was going to escalate somehow.

“ Are you alright, Jay?” The old master asked, clearly watching how his student was acting.

Somehow, Jay managed to swallow down the knot that was forming in order to get a reply out.

“ I’m fine, Master Wu.” He said, though, thanks to the slight quiver in his voice, it was clear that no one believed him.

“ Perhaps you should sit this afternoon’s training out. I have no objections if you choose to just watch.”

“ Honestly, Master Wu, I’m fine. I can do training. I’m a ninja, after all. And a ninja’s got to stay sharp. Can’t get rusty. Can’t let them get the better of you. Gotta keep fighting. A ninja never quits.”

Master Wu’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. It wasn’t like his ninja to be this forceful in trying to get him to see they were something they clearly were not. Unless it was Kai or maybe Cole. Those two boys had a tendency to want to push their bodies beyond their limits once ideas got in their heads. But to see it coming from Jay, who he knew was just as keen to skip training as he was to actually train, was a little off putting.

And this was despite the fact that the lightning master was clearly rambling.

“ Very well.” The old master said, “ Though if you do feel you need to leave, for any reason, you are free to do so. For now, I would like to remind you all that your fights will not always be in you favour. There are many ways the enemy can trap you, many ways they can corner you and take down your defences. Even those you see as what you would call ‘push overs’ could actually turn out to be a much more experienced foe. You could end up with your back against a wall and unable to find an easy escape route. You could find yourself unable to use your weapons or powers. Yet, you may also be lucky enough to find that your opponent does not have equal tools as you do. In which case both of you would have to rely on your martial arts skills, if your opponent happens to have such skills as well.

“ I believe you should all be able to see where this is going. For this afternoon’s training, I want to try and replicate a scenario where you have little room to manoeuvre and cannot rely on your weapons, your powers or your spinjitzu.”

“ But spinjitzu is our form of martial arts.” Kai pointed out. “ How are we supposed to fight without using it?”

“ Simple. By not using your spinjitzu tornado. Spinjitzu is more than just elemental tornadoes that can easily dispatch your enemy after all. It is balance, rotation and harmony. It is used to defend not only others but also yourselves. Think of your training. Do you always use your spinjitzu tornadoes? Or do you use your combination drills and your katas? Your punches, kicks, flips and throws?”

Kai looked away from his teacher. Apparently, he had forgotten about that aspect of spinjitzu in his haste to figure out what was wrong with Jay and how he could help him. And it was clear that he was now trying to hide his embarrassment… especially seeing as he had once been in a fighting ring himself way back after the incident with the digital Overlord.

Wu could only sigh at the sight before him.

“ Anyway, your task is to knock your opponent on the ground and keep them there for five seconds using only your techniques and combinations. No elemental powers. No spinjitzu tornadoes. Light contact only. This is still a sparring match after all and not a real-life situation. You will split into pairs for this and when one gets knocked down, both members will leave the ring. Is that clear?”

“ Yes, Master Wu.” The ninja confirmed.

“ If you’re willing, Jay, I would like you to go first. Pick your opponent.”

Jay picked Cole. He initially didn’t understand why at first, but deep down he had a feeling it was because Cole’s element would be able to ground him if things managed to get out of control. Not that he wanted that to happen. If he could survive this without any flashbacks, he’d be happy, beyond happy, take Nya out on a date happy.

But he knew that Cole had once seen the results of Scrap ‘n’ Tap before, even if he didn’t remember it. So the lightning ninja had a sense that his friend would still take it a little easy on him despite how focussed Master Wu wanted them to be. The look in Cole’s eyes, both now and before they had walked out to the training grounds, was clearly telling him that much.

He just had to trust that his friends were all going to be there and be able to stop him if things did get out of control. Because he had a really bad feeling, as he stepped into the ring beside Cole, that things were going to do just that. Get out of control… from him and everyone else.

The two ninja had barely turned to face each other and bow before Master Wu had called for the match to begin. And Jay had barely heard him when he did thanks to his unheard fears pressing themselves onto his brain. Before he knew it, he had Cole’s fist flying at his face.

“ Gah!” the lightning ninja exclaimed before quickly blocking the attack.

After that, things seemed to go smoothly for a while. Jay and Cole swapped fighting techniques while still managing to stay within the ring’s perimeter. Spinning kicks – not too fast to form a spinjitzu tornado – were dodged and countered. Open handed and closed fisted strikes were shared, parried and blocked in lightning fast movements by both boys. Jay even felt like he was going to be able to get through the training session without anything happening.

But then Cole managed to get in a kick past his defences and his right leg gave out, bringing him to his knee and forcing his mind to go back to when one of the pirates had done a similar move. Jay couldn’t remember who they were or even what they looked like, but he definitely remembered the jeers sent his way as he had tripped over the vengestone ball clamped around his foot.

Suddenly, he was no longer in the monastery, training against Cole. Suddenly, he was back in the depths of the _Misfortune’s Keep_ , a ball and chain blocking him from his powers and pirates surrounding him, trying to get him to relent. But he wasn’t going to relent. Not when so much was on the line. As he managed to get up from his kneeling position, ignoring the faint throb in his ankle, Jay heaved out a deep breath and focussed on the shadowy, burly figure before him.

 _“ Just say the words, ninja.”_ Nadakhan’s voice penetrated the darkness of his mind.

“ A ninja never quits.” The lightning master spat out.

 _“ If that is what you wish._ Next!”

But the burly figure didn’t move. They just stood there, hands out as if getting ready to grapple their opponent. What he didn’t realise was that the shadowy figure before him was actually Cole. And the black ninja was trying to calm him down.

“ You’re okay, Jay.” He said softly, not realising he wasn’t getting through to the blue ninja. “ We’re just going to sit down.”

He took a slow step forward, hoping to ease his clearly upset friend out of the ring, but Jay would have none of it. Having seen a possible attack coming for him, Jay pushed aside the oncoming arms and aimed a punch directly for Cole’s collarbone. And judging by the clouded look in his eyes, Jay was no longer holding back the power in his attacks.

Cole barely had enough time to move himself out of the way before Jay’s fist landed. He wasn’t quite sure, but he thought he saw a spark or two of electricity fly off the mass of muscle, bone and power as it flew towards him. And even if he didn’t, he was not keen on ending up with a broken collarbone by the end of the day.

But he noticed something as he moved to dodge the attack. Jay was dragging his right foot behind him slightly, almost like he had something heavy wrapped around it. And that was starting to get concerning. Especially if he was able to slip so easily into his memories like he was doing now. If Jay’s mind slipped during an actual fight… Cole didn’t want to think about what could happen. He just knew it would be bad.

“ Easy, Jay.” He tried again. “ It’s just me, Cole. Your best friend. It’s time to stop fighting. The match is over. We need to sit down.”

For a reply, Jay merely fell back into stance, his unfocussed eyes determined to defeat whatever foe he was seeing even if it killed him.

“ Jay, come on, man. Snap out of it.” Kai grumbled, his own worry seeping through his words.

Zane turned to face the fire ninja. “ I do believe he cannot do that Kai. Jay seems to be quite deep within his memories and so it may take some time for him to realise exactly where he is.”

“ How long, exactly?”

“ I don’t know. It all depends on Jay.”

“ I should have known that was going to be the answer.”

Nya turned on her brother with a questioning look on her face. “ Then why did you ask?”

“ Well, wouldn’t it be dangerous if he’s stuck in his memories for a long period of time?” Kai replied, somehow managing to tear his gaze from the two in the ring.

“ We just have to help ease Jay through them, that’s all.” Lloyd determined.

Kai turned back to the ongoing struggle between Cole and Jay. “ No offense, but I don’t think it’s working very well.”

By now, Master Wu had made his way into the ring and was trying to get his student to focus and calm down. Like Cole, he had his free hand up in a placating gesture and his voice was soothing as he tried to talk Jay down. But nothing was getting through to the blue ninja. If anything, his panic was starting to worsen. And that was evident from the way he was trying to position Cole between himself and their teacher.

Apparently, Jay found Master Wu a much deadlier opponent. And despite his continued efforts to settle his student, it was clear that the old spinjitzu master was concerned about what he was seeing. Those sitting on the sidelines were more than definitely concerned about their friend’s health. Also about Cole and what he was planning; watching on with baited breath in case things were to go south very quickly.

Cole was slowly inching closer to Jay even as the lightning wielder was trying to position him in front of Master Wu, trying not to alert him of his movements. He figured, if he could get behind him and pin him down so that he wouldn’t flail around and potentially cause damage, then he may have a chance at calming Jay down. But there was also the voice in the back of his head reminding him of the fact that Jay still had full use of his lightning. And if he was startled, Jay could very well use that power to electrocute him.

Not something Cole was keen to experience… again.

“ Jay. Come on, buddy. Focus on me. Focus on my voice. It’s me Cole. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s over. You’re save now. I’m safe. Nya’s safe. We’re all safe. There’s no need to keep fighting like this.” Somehow, as he was talking, Cole managed to place his hand on Jay’s left arm, but still he was wary. “ We just need to close our eyes and take a deep breath. I’ll even do it with you.”

And yet, something in what Cole had said seemed to spark recognition in Jay’s eyes. No one could pinpoint exactly what it was, but it gave them all hope that he was going to start calming down. Cole even started to feel comfortable with moving to his friend’s side, albeit slowly, to try and get Jay to sit down. Even so, he was still wary. Jay could easily go back to fighting in this confused state he now found himself in.

Jay, however, was very confused indeed. All of a sudden, the burly pirate that was standing in front of him had started sounding like Cole. And a soothing Cole at that, too. Not to mention, the Cole sounding pirate kept saying that everyone was safe.

The only problem was, what if it was all a trick? What if the pirate was trying to falsify his safety so that he could pummel him into the ground again? For all he knew, all this niceness was some kind of ploy to get him to expose himself and make his final wish.

But wait!

Hadn’t he already made his last wish?

That’s when he felt the weight on his arm. Slowly he looked down only to see the burly pirate’s calloused hand grabbing onto his arm. Though he couldn’t tell if the grab was tight or not, which was a little concerning. Even so, he tried to pull away. But the jerk of his hand only caused the grip to tighten and suddenly an old wound was flaring up again, reminding him of the pain he had endured when metal monkey fangs had ripped into the flesh of his arm.

It was enough to snap him out of the past. With an almighty cry, Jay ripped his arm from Cole’s grip and pulled the left sleeve of his gi up to his shoulder. He hated when his chronic pain flared up, especially when it decided to pair up with his PTSD. There were times when he actually believed that the pain was just a construct of his Post Traumatic Stress.

Of course, the pain may also be because he wasn’t completely sure how the wound had been stitched up in the first place. He remembered getting bitten by Monkey Wretch after he managed to pull his tail to try and get him away from his face. And he more than definitely remembered the pain. But when he woke up, not long before Cole found him, the bite wound that had been gushing blood when he last saw it had been stitched up and his forearm now had what looked like a curved valley amongst mountains of puffed skin.

At least he was able to get some comfort from the fabric of his sleeves rubbing against the wounds. For some reason the gentle movement seemed to erase the pain and the memories. He couldn’t understand why though. But he embraced it along with the comfort that the long-sleeved clothes hid his scars from view.

Gingerly, he rubbed around the scar, massaging the closed skin to try and settle the memory. Of course, he was fully aware that the scars on his arm were on full view for both Cole and Master Wu to see. And he was fully aware of the pained looks they were giving him despite not wanting to look up from what he was doing. Heck, he knew himself that he was too young to have scars like these. But even though he was barely okay with just those two seeing his arm, at least no one had seen his back.

“ Jay.” Cole’s voice was practically a whisper. “ What… how did you get that… that scar?”

Jay still didn’t look up from the puffed-up mound of the flesh. “ Monkey Wretch.”

“ Who or what is a monkey wrench?” Kai asked.

“ Not wrench, Wretch.” Nya corrected, her voice also hushed. “ The creep was not a tool.”

“ Was this Monkey Wretch a robot pirate monkey who happened to have knowledge in the way of mechanics?” Zane asked, clearly remembering what had happened on the Dark Island.

Jay remained silent. A clear indication of the fact that they were talking about the same creature. Instead, he turned himself around and moved out of the ring, still rubbing at the wound that the others could now see. And they weren’t too impressed by the wound either judging by the almost horrified looks on their faces.

Suddenly, Lloyd gained a thoughtful look on his face. He remembered the hard look on Jay’s face when he had been fighting off the pirates on the Dark Island. Not to mention the force in his attacks had been strong enough for anyone to easily recognise them as payback for something. At the time, the green ninja had just passed it off as a stronger resolve to defend Ninjago. Now, he was beginning to wonder if it was thanks to a much darker reason.

“ Jay? How badly did the pirates hurt you?” he asked quietly, though loud enough that his voice managed to echo throughout the training grounds.


	14. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, graphic warnings apply to this chapter thanks to the wounds I believe Jay had inflicted upon him while he was with the sky pirates.
> 
> Also, careening the hull is what you call it when you take a ship out of the water to scrape the hull clean of all the nasties that cling to it and damage it, like barnacles and such.

Jay froze.

There was no other explanation for the sudden cold chill he felt when Lloyd’s question reached his ears. His breath had started coming in pants and his heart was starting to race, but he couldn’t move. Not even as the walls surrounding the monastery threatened to grow around him could he manage to even bend his pinkie finger.

A shadow materialised by his side and gently urged his body to sit on the ground, guiding his joints to bend so as to accommodate the new position. Someone moved closer to his side, taking his injured arm in to their lap and lacing their fingers with his. In the haze, he managed to catch the soothing sounds of words being spoken, but not the words themselves. What made him jump, though, was when someone gently placed their hand on his back.

With the frame of mind he was currently in, he wasn’t surprised that he was so sensitive to touch. But he was still trying to settle himself from his flashback as well as come to terms with the fact that his friends had pretty much guessed that the sky pirates had tortured him. He honestly didn’t mean to send a warning bolt of electricity into those that were merely trying to help.

But he had.

And he knew that everyone had stepped away from him because of it.

“ Sorry, sorry.” He rushed, realising what had happened and coming to his senses.

“ No, no, Jay. No. There’s nothing for you to apologise for.” Nya’s voice soothed, almost instantly taking his hand back in hers despite the shock she was given. “ We were the ones who overstepped our boundaries. We’re the ones who should be sorry.”

“ I shouldn’t have shocked you.”

“ Don’t worry about it, Jay.” Cole’s voice sounded from his other side, slightly pained but otherwise determined to help Jay through whatever was happening. “ It was an accident. And those things happen.”

Jay looked up at the now empty training ring he had not long escaped from. He honestly thought he would be safe from the pain the pirates had inflicted when he was training. It had never happened before, after all. So, he didn’t think that the return of a simple circle would reignite those memories and force him to react so violently.

What he didn’t know was that the others could see just how dark his eyes had become as the memories seemed to press onto his mind once more. Sapphire blue turned almost midnight… and it scared all of them. Master Wu took one look at his students, returning his worried gaze to the lightning master, before lowering his hat over his eyes.

“ I believe afternoon training will be postponed. We will try this same exercise again tomorrow.” He said before turning away.

Before anyone could object, the old master was gone. And for some reason, that annoyed Jay. Just because his mind was rebelling against his body didn’t mean the others had to sit out because of him. That just wasn’t fair.

The next thing any of the other ninja knew, Jay had gotten up and was dragging the nearest ninja with him back into the ring. That ninja just so happened to be Cole. And the look on Cole’s face was clearly questioning what had gotten into his friend as well as why he was being dragged back to the place he had, minutes ago, walked out of.

“ Okay, so… what did we have to do again?” Jay asked once the two of them were back in the ring.

“ Jay, you were literally just having a major PTSD attack.” Lloyd said, standing up and making his way into the ring himself. “ Are you sure you want to fight this soon after it?”

“ Just because my mind is messed up a lot more than it usually is doesn’t mean I’m going to let it get in the way of you guys training. And I’m going to have to get over everything anyway, so I might as well tackle this head on now. Before any more pirates decide to kidnap me and drag me off into yet another round of Scrap ‘n’ Tap. Have to make sure I’m quick enough to get out early if I don’t want another beating… or any more wounds from crazy robot monkeys.”

“ What is Scrap ‘n’ Tap?” Cole asked, refusing to get into a fighting position. “You were muttering about it earlier.”

Jay fell silent, realising what he had said a little too late. Now he had that question buzzing around in his head along with Lloyd’s earlier question. And by the looks of it, or so he noticed out of the corner of his eye, Zane and Lloyd were both starting to realise that the two questions were connected in some way. But before he was even able to form words in his head to try and explain everything, Kai had practically leapt into the ring with a protective look in his eyes.

“ Those pirates didn’t rough you up too badly, did they? Because if this is the reason why you’re not acting like your happy-go-lucky self, the reason why you have PTSD, then I will personally smash every single one of those pirates that are in Kryptarium Prison right now into the ground in the worst Slither Pit they’ve ever been in!” The red ninja practically roared, his eyes glowing red for a second as he spoke. “ And I’ll personally go to the Serpentine to make sure it happens.”

Everyone was too stunned to answer at first, with Lloyd and Jay both taking a step away from the fury of the fire user. Cole, however, took a step toward Kai in an attempt to try and placate his friend. It wouldn’t do to have him worked up like he was now. But no one expected laughter to erupt from Jay after he spent a few minutes regaining himself enough to think.

“ Those pirates would be at home in a Slither Pit, Kai. Even more so if the pit referee allows weapons.” The blue ninja said, already starting to take off his gi top.

“ What do you mean?” Kai’s anger started to dissipate as the words left his mouth.

“ The Slither Pit is a fighting ring where two people usually fight each other, right? There are no rules, and you can fight with weapons if you’re allowed. And the winner can choose to stay in the ring or leave while the loser gets escorted out, am I right?” Jay waited for Kai’s confirmation before continuing. “ Well, Scarp ‘n’ Tap is a lot like a slither pit. No rules. One on one fighting. Certain weapons allowed. Pirates don’t play fair, though. The loser doesn’t get escorted out of the ring until after they can barely stand or stay awake. The winner is the only one who is allowed to ‘tap out’… and that’s only until after they deem the loser down long enough. And it can go on all day if it has to. Not to mention, in my experience, I had a vengestone ball and chain clamped around my foot. I don’t even know how many times that thing got in my way. But I swear I can still feel the bruises even though it’s been over a year.”

Finally, Jay’s gi top fell to the ground, showing off the athlete’s build that was now marred with scars. Just like with his left arm, his right bore scars from wounds no one remembered him receiving. Thankfully, none were as gruesome as the bite from Monkey Wretch. And his front was mercifully bare of any serious looking scars that had not been there before.

But things changed when Jay turned around to show his back.

Scars from hooked hands that had once ripped open his gi ran across his shoulders and sides. Animal scratch marks also made their home across his shoulders and down his back, possibly more memories of what Monkey Wretch had done. But the worst sight were the deep scars across his back that looked to have been made by a whip of some sort.

“ When the constant swabbing of the deck or the careening of the hull wasn’t enough, they’d use me as Scrap ‘n’ Tap bait. That’s where all these scars came from. And they did it to try and get me to make my final wish. But I didn’t give in. I wouldn’t. There was too much at stake. Nadakhan wanted Nya so that he could marry her and gain unlimited wishes for himself. And First Spinjitzu Master, I was not going to let that happen.”

Carefully, Jay bent down and pick up his gi top. He even made a point not to look at anyone while he was putting it back on, slowly hiding the scars from view once more. And he quietly revelled in the fact that he was no longer pressured to show them despite questioning why he showed them in the first place. But he knew that seeing the remains of his pain was causing his friends’ hearts to break. And that knowledge seemed to weigh heavily on his heart.

“ Cole saved me though.” He sighed, a deflated tone laced heavily through his voice. “ He found me in the captain’s quarters and tried to sneak me out of there. But we got captured along with Nya and Lloyd. And then all three of them decided to waste all their wishes, with Lloyd growing old and Cole throwing us all, pirates included, off the ship. The whole botched escape was cringe worthy. And no one listened to me. In the end, Cole and Lloyd got sucked into the sword leaving Nya and me to create a fusion dragon with our combined powers because being worked and beaten until you dropped while wearing vengestone the entire time drains your energy and powers something fierce. But that hydroelectric dragon had to be one of the most beautiful things I saw at that moment. Right after seeing Nya safely away from Nadakhan.”

It was the continued silence that made Jay turn around once he had stopped with his story. That was when he noticed the horrified expressions on their faces. Well, they weren’t worried now, so that was a bonus… sort of. Though there was a high possibility that that worry had morphed into the horror that now captured them all.

Both Kai’s and Cole’s jaws were set, with Kai’s hands balled into shaking fists and smoke clearly visible as it swirled around them. Cole’s eyes, however, were dark and distant. It was almost like he was remembering something or else blaming himself for what had happened to his best friend. Lloyd also shared that look of self-blame, but he looked like he was thinking it through and trying to learn from everything that Jay had said.

It was hard to figure out what Zane thought about everything he had learned. Like Lloyd he seemed to be taking everything he had learned and was trying to find ways to help his brother through it. But there was also a darkness in his eyes that was akin to that in both Kai’s and Cole’s eyes. He was obviously blaming himself for not being able to protect the ones he loved, protect his brother.

The worst sight was Nya. Despite her usually tough exterior, just seeing what her boyfriend had had to endure while he was imprisoned by pirates had sent silent tears rolling down her cheeks. And that was the sight that had a clamp squeezing at Jay’s own heart. That was also why he never told anyone what had actually happened before then.

“ We were able to hide in the Police Station for a short period of time once we got back to Ninjago. It was maximum one night, though.” Jay tried to reassure everyone. “ And I convinced the Commissioner to let us back on the Bounty in order to get a quick change of clothes under guard before we split up – still under guard – to gather supplies. I admit, I hung back a little to at least cover the wounds before heading off myself.”

“ And we did quiz each other once we got back together again just to be on the safe side.” Nya added, the tightness of tears in her voice clear to all despite her trying to hide it. “ I never realised you were that desperate to hide the wounds from me. I could have helped you clean them up.”

“ I had to keep you safe. And explaining what had happened to me while I was imprisoned by Nadakhan was not part of that job description. I didn’t want you to worry about me, so I hid what I could.” Jay explained before turning back to the others. “ Once we had what we could gather quickly, including a pot of travellers tea, the Commissioner locked us in a room together with a map.”

Upon hearing this, though, the smoke around Kai’s fists seemed to darken. It was surprising given the fact that he had known that Jay and Nya had been together for well over a year. And he knew that Jay would never do anything bad to his sister unless it was under her consent. Then again, no one was sure if it was because his protective brotherly instincts were kicking in or because he was getting angry with himself for not being able to protect anyone.

“ Please tell me you…” The fire ninja started slowly

“ Okay, I think story time has gotten to Kai.” Cole said, effectively stopping whatever thoughts had entered Kai’s head. He didn’t want another event similar to the love triangle shenanigans occurring, after all. Even if there was no actual triangle this time around.

“ What?”

“ Think about it, Kai. Jay and Nya had just gotten free from this Nadakhan creep. For their own safety, they’ve been locked in a room probably to try and figure out their next plan of action. I doubt anything else would have happened.”

“ Cole’s right. The only thing that happened in that room was Jay and I working out where we were going to hide. And we managed to get out of there just in time, too. So, everything turned out fine for that moment.” Nya reassured everyone.

Zane, however, was watching the blood drain from Jay’s face and it was worrying him fierce. “ Jay, brother, are you sure you are all right?”

“ Echo.” Was all Jay managed to whisper, the look on his own face morphing into its own form of horror.

“ What?” It seemed to be the only word that Kai was capable of at that moment.

“ I forgot Echo. Nya, how could I have forgotten Echo?”

Nya’s face contorted itself back into its horrified features, but this time, there was an element of sadness hidden within as well. She knew that Jay’s mind was making him forget things that had once happened during the now alternate timeline that the sky pirates had caused. It was his body’s way of coping with everything, after all. She just never imagined that he would forget about someone as sweet and naïve as Echo.

Now she was faced with another hurdle, and this time Jay was facing it with her. How were the two of them going to explain to Zane that he actually had a little brother locked away in a lonely lighthouse with only a cleaning robot and a flock of seagulls to keep him company? How would Zane react to this knowledge? It didn’t help that neither of them knew the answers themselves.

But it seemed Zane was going to try and help them along.

“ Jay, who is Echo?” The titanium ninja asked.

Jay scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “ Well, Zane. Please don’t get mad at me for forgetting. I do remember, at one point before the whole Time Twins thing, I did try to get back to the lighthouse. But with everything all happening at once, there was barely enough time to go anywhere without worrying people or without something happening. And then my mind started doing weird things, and it probably sounds like I’m just making excuses and I guess you could say that I am… but the truth is, you’re not the only nindroid created by Doctor Julien. And I’m not talking about that weird protector robot that we found in Birchwood Forest or your Falcon. Zane, you have a little brother. Granted, he’s all rusted because of being on his own and because of the sea spray landing on him, but he’s a lot like you appearance wise and we kind of had to shorten his name from Echo Zane to Echo because no one would ever be able to replace you as Zane.”

This time it was Zane’s turn to feel like he was going to shut down. And that kind of feeling, he knew, was not a pleasant feeling.

He had a brother. Not a brother in arms or an adopted brother like how he saw the other ninja, but an actual brother created by the same father. A blood brother, if you will, unlike that of the bond he shared with his teammates. A brother he didn’t know about until after his father had passed, until after thoughts of that lighthouse were practically erased from his memories; forgotten as time went on.

But why hadn’t he been told earlier? Why had his father kept his younger brother a secret from him? Had there been a side effect from the Resurrectea or had his old age caused his memory to lapse? His father had seemed quite stable when he had been rescued and even in the months following. All the way up until his death, to be precise. But, perhaps, he may never know the true reason as to why his father did what he did.

There was really only one thing left to do now that he knew he had a brother. He had to get to that lighthouse and open his brother’s eyes to a much larger world beyond that of a dreary old lighthouse prison. But in doing that, Zane knew, he was be taking this Echo from the only place he knew of… the only home he ever had. And that brought forth the question, would Echo even want to leave the lighthouse?

Zane’s head was so full of questions and the strange concoction of confusion and numbness that he failed to register when Jay had rushed back into the temple muttering about how the ninja were going to get to the lighthouse. His mind was too far away to register what Cole, Kai, Lloyd and Nya were saying amongst themselves about the ordeal. It wasn’t until he felt the presence of Cole, Kai and Nya by his side that he finally managed to regain himself.

“ You alright there, buddy?” Kai asked, placing a hand on Zane’s shoulder.

Zane looked at each of the three ninja beside him, his eyes lingering on Nya before returning his gaze to his feet. “ Why was I not told I had a brother? Why was he left at the lighthouse?”

“ I’m not sure why he was left there, Zane. But to add to what Jay said, neither of us could figure out how to tell you. Just like we couldn’t figure out how to explain the sky pirates. I’m sorry.” Nya sighed, knowing full well that she and Jay were in the wrong for keeping this a secret for so long.

There were no words to say to that. Zane knew it wasn’t alright that his friends had kept this a secret from him, but he also couldn’t stay mad at them. They had been through quite a lot, judging by what he and the others had been told, and memories can lapse over time. Even so, he was glad that he had finally been told about Echo and knew he would not forgive himself in anything bad happened to his little brother.

With a soft smile, he placed a hand on Nya’s shoulder. That gesture alone let the water ninja know that she – at least – was forgiven. Jay probably was too, but one could never be too sure. But before anyone could say anything else on the matter, Lloyd came running over to them looking a little panicked.

“ Lloyd?” Cole called, having been the first to notice the look on his leader’s face and so alerted the others of his presence.

“ It’s Jay. He’s packing again.” The green ninja panted, worry in his eyes.

“ Packing?”

“ He’s not running away again, is he?” Kai asked.

“ I don’t know. He was heading into the kitchen when I ran out here.”

“ Why the kitchen?”

That alone made Nya start to think. Jay had remembered Echo Zane moments before he had charged back into the temple, all while muttering something about yachts and the _Destiny’s Bounty._ Now that Lloyd had come rushing out of the temple saying that her boyfriend was packing and had gone into the kitchen to do so, she had a pretty good idea on what was going on.

Still, she had to ask, “ What did Jay say he was packing?”

Lloyd had to stop and think for a few minutes before he was able to reply, “ Um… he said something about a change of clothes and a boardgame or two. And he kept telling himself off whenever he mentioned something about poison or Traveller’s Tea, and that was like, every few minutes I was watching him. When he rushed into the kitchen, he actually told me that he was getting enough…”

“ …Enough food for a week.” All eyes turned to Nya as she finished, with a small laugh, what her leader was going to say. “ Of course. He’s running through what we took to the lighthouse. Jay’s getting ready to go get Echo. Zane? What do you want to do? Do you want to go get your brother with us?”

Zane’s face broke into a smile as he took the hand that Nya had extended towards him as she spoke. “ To be able to show my brother the world beyond the lighthouse if he is so willing? To be there when he takes his first steps into a new life? I think I would like that a lot.”

At that point, Kai got to his feet and started making his way into the temple. “ Well, I guess we better start packing.”

“ I wonder if Jay’s planning on packing any cake as well.” Cole thought aloud as he followed the fire ninja into the temple.

“ Cole, we’re going to a supposed-to-be abandoned lighthouse. We don’t need to take any cake with us.”

“ Says you. Cake can be a very effective way of making friends.”

“ Unless you eat it all.”

“ Hey!”

Zane and Nya followed the arguing boys in silence as they, too, made their way inside to pack. Though it wasn’t hard to tell that the nindroid was a little excited to meet his long-lost brother. This left Lloyd standing in the training grounds alone, watching as his team got themselves ready for what would be a long boat ride to the lighthouse.

“ I guess I’ll be the one to tell Uncle Wu what’s going on.” He sighed, eventually making his own way back into the temple to do the deed.


	15. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are almost at the end of this story. I hope you all have been enjoying this roller coaster ride.

Master Wu had not been happy when Lloyd had told him of what had transpired in the training grounds once he had left. Of course, the ninja didn’t show they cared that they had upset their teacher despite feeling a little bad about it. They had all set their minds on a task and they were going to complete it. So, despite Wu’s warnings, they all left for Cliff Gordon’s yacht and were on the open ocean by the time night fell.

It just wasn’t one of Jay’s greatest ideas.

“ Did we really have to take the yacht?” Kai complained, staring at the vast ocean that surrounded said yacht from the doorway with a tight expression on his face.

“ I have a better question, could this not have waited until morning?” Lloyd huffed from behind Kai.

“ The quicker we get to the lighthouse, the quicker we can get to safety.” Jay growled back from where he was steering the yacht.

Cole gently placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “ We’re already safe, Jay. We don’t need to hurry.”

“ Well, I’m not going to risk anything. No storms. No evil djinn pirates. And no ship eating monsters.”

They all knew what kind of monsters Jay was talking about. The seemingly innocent looking ones with massive teeth that could eat through anything. The kind that nearly managed to destroy the _Destiny’s Bounty_ once before. Starteeth. A collective shudder seemed to run though the entire yacht at the memory of the starteeth.

Jay turned his eyes to the dark sky above. There was no sign of storm clouds blotting out the shine of the glistening stars. Not even on the horizon. The sky was just an endless blanket of stars that seemed to guide the way to their destination. And the ocean was pretty calm itself. No massive waves in miles to dump evil ‘water vampires’ onto unsuspecting ships.

Still… maybe he should get Zane to check the underside of the yacht just in case those laughing sneaks were having a field day on the hull. He may be confused about how his biological father had acted when he was a baby, but this was his yacht now and there was no way that he was going to let anything destroy it a second time if he could help it.

Then again, maybe both Lloyd and Kai were right. The starteeth seemed to show up at night as well as in the storm. And the _Destiny’s Bounty_ could fly, unlike the yacht that Jay was currently steering. Starteeth, much like the yacht, couldn’t fly. If they had taken the _Destiny’s Bounty_ then they would have been able to fly to the lighthouse, possibly getting there faster than the speed they were doing now.

It was at that point that Jay realised his stupidity and let loose the groan that had been building.

“ Are you sure everything’s okay, Jay?” Cole asked.

“ I hate to admit it, but Kai and Lloyd are right.” The blue ninja groaned in reply. “ We should have taken the _Destiny’s Bounty,_ that way we could have been able to fly. Because starteeth seem to love storms and darkness. So if we had waited ‘til morning and taken the _Bounty_ , we’d be able to be at the lighthouse faster and safer than if we were in the yacht or even a small row boat. You know, I still don’t understand how the starteeth never showed themselves while I was rowing to the lighthouse that time that Nya and I had to hide from that creep Nadakhan.”

Kai finally turned his gaze away from the dark abyss to look at his friend in slight awe. “ Let me get this straight. You rowed all the way to the lighthouse from Ninjago in a dinghy?”

“ Well, not all the way. We were almost there when Nya decided that she had to use her powers to propel us through the water.”

“ You wouldn’t let her row, would you?” Cole smirked.

The sheepish look on Jay’s face was enough of an answer for Cole to start laughing and Kai to manage a smile. They both knew that, despite his flighty tendencies, Jay was the chivalrous type. True, it was probably thanks to the humble way he was brought up, but they honestly wouldn’t have him any other way.

But it was also clear that it was getting quite late and that Jay was clearly getting tired thanks to the lack of focus his eyes were starting to do now. To be honest, they all were tired. Nya had already found a bed below deck and had claimed that almost as soon as the sun had set. Lloyd, despite his wariness of travelling so late at night like they were, had also given up the fight not long ago and had returned to the depths of the yacht to find his own place to crash. Cole and Kai could feel that they themselves weren’t too far behind, leaving only Zane to be fully functioning.

The only problem was that no one had seen Zane since sunset.

“ You two don’t need to stay up with me.” Jay said, trying to hide a yawn that had crept upon him.

“ You need rest, too, Jay.” Cole countered. “ Why don’t you drop the anchor and we can all get some sleep?”

“ Because I don’t want to wake up to starteeth destroying our only way to and from the lighthouse. Master Wu would not be happy if we have to send a distress signal to him on top of having disobeyed him.”

No one could argue with that. Master Wu would be furious with his ninja and would most likely punish them in some way that no evil mastermind would even dream of. They would be worked to the bone from dawn until dusk for over a month and with no chance of a break. As it was, they could all expect some form of severe punishment from their clan leader for going against his word. And they all feared what that would be.

It was while Kai, Cole and Jay were imaging the possible punishments that they were no doubt going to receive that Zane emerged from the upper deck of the yacht. He looked like he was about to head in for bed himself, but the sight of the three younger ninja still awake stopped him in his tracks.

“ Brothers? What are you still doing awake?” he asked innocently but with an air of confusion attached to his words.

“ Currently trying to get Jay to realise he needs sleep, too.” Kai replied, still not moving from the doorway.

“ While thinking about the danger that we’ll be putting ourselves in when we arrive back at the temple.” Cole added with an unamused frown.

“ Danger? Has something happened to the temple in the short time that spans between now and the time we left?” Zane asked. “ Must we turn back to help Master Wu and Pixal with defending our home?”

“ No, Zane. Cole just means we’ll be in trouble with Master Wu because we took off on our own on Cliff Gordon’s yacht when we weren’t supposed to.” Jay yawned.

“ I see. We’ll I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think it will be.”

“ Haven’t you learnt yet, Zane? Never say stuff like that. Something bad will always happen.”

“ Be that as it may, a ninja must be prepared for anything. An unbeaten boss in one of your video games, a tough training routine that must be mastered, or even an electric chicken.”

As he mentioned the electric chicken from the previous night, Zane couldn’t help but smirk in Kai’s direction. Not to mention the mischievous spark in his eye was clearly noticeable to the fire and earth ninja as well. Kai even smirked himself.

But Jay… he could only groan as he tilted his head back to look up at the stars.

“ Not you too, Zane.” He grumbled.

“ I’m merely stating that we should be prepared for anything.” The ice ninja replied. “ But, I believe that, right now, we should all prepare ourselves for sleep. If we drop anchor now, we should be able to avoid any starteeth. Or, if you are really worried about them, I could always take over while you slept, and we would still make it in time for sunrise at the lighthouse.”

“ But you would be alone, then.”

“ I would be safe. We are not in any danger, Jay. Rest assured.”

Jay still looked uncertain about leaving the wheel. But, despite how tired he looked, the others could understand where his fears were coming from. No one wanted their ship to be wrecked by storm or by starteeth. Both had happened in the past, after all.

Still, Zane was persistent in making sure his brothers got some sleep. And he eventually won when Jay finally agreed to relinquish the wheel to him once he had promised to alert them of any danger should there be any. Though, Kai and Cole did still have to lead the blue ninja away from the wheel and below deck so that he could try and get some well-deserved rest that he obviously needed.

* * *

By the time someone bothered to wake Jay (that night’s sleep had been one of the better nights and no one had wanted to disturb him), Zane had just eased the yacht onto the shore of the lighthouse prison. The others had even decided to have breakfast in the lighthouse while he slept, so when the blue ninja stumbled towards the galley, he got a surprise to find that no one was making anything to eat.

“ Um… who’s turn is it to make breakfast?” he called out sleepily.

“ That would be me.” Lloyd piped up from where he was entering the yacht.

“ Then why are you outside and not in the kitchen?”

“ Oh, we’ve decided to eat in the lighthouse. There should be something in that massive cooler we all packed yesterday to make an okay breakfast out of.”

Jay blinked the sleep out of his eyes as he tried to focus on what his leader was saying. But one thing seemed to stick to his mind. “ The lighthouse? We can’t be eating at the lighthouse. We’re not even-”

Kai cut the confused ninja short as he stepped below deck after Lloyd. “ Uh, yeah we are. Zane just landed the yacht, like not that long before we called you to get up. The others are waiting outside for you with all our things.”

“ We’re there already?”

“ Yeah. And we’re waiting for you. Now come on; Cole’s guarding the cooler.”

That was incentive enough to get moving. Jay hurried to grab his own bag that he had brought with him before he followed Lloyd and Kai out onto the deck. Sure enough, as he entered the outside world, he noted that Cole was indeed standing next to the food cooler. But his back was turned away from the cabin door as, like Nya and Zane beside him, he stared up at the lighthouse prison before them.

Slowly, the other three ninja made their way over to where their fellow clan members stood, taking in the solemn air that seemed to surround them. It was clear that they were all thinking about the last time they had been there, the state in which they had found Dr Julien living in. Nya and Jay also thinking about how they had first found Echo… and the last time they had seen him.

“ I never expected to see myself return to such a dark place.” Zane eventually spoke up a good five minutes later. “ I believed all the dark memories that stained my father’s memory and had kept him trapped here would be forgotten once he was free. Or at least never have to be reawakened. I never expected there to be another those dark memories could infect, another hidden within these walls.” A soft sigh left the nindroid as he finally broke whatever spell the lighthouse had managed to trap him in. “ Now that I know there was another… is another, I find I am disappointed in myself for not coming sooner to broaden the life my little brother has had within these walls.”

“ We all would have, Zane.” Cole replied, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Jay had to swallow down the lump that had started forming in his throat before he could say anything. “ I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner about all this.”

“ Please, Jay, do not worry. While I may not truly comprehend why you felt the need to keep this from me for so long, I am happy that you have found the courage to tell me about it now.” The master of ice smiled soft, but still managing a certain air of calm that could only be associated with him.

“ I just hope we’re not too late.” Kai mumbled under his breath, but with how quite everything was, there was a possibility that he was heard.

No one said anything about it, though. Instead, they all turned to disembark the yacht before starting the long journey up the stairs to the front door. And none of them could help the sense that they were being watched. But even though they were all silent as they made their way up the stairs, Jay’s mind, at least, was wandering from the unsettling feeling that seemed to surround them.

“ Is it just me, or do really mystic and really creepy places always have a lot of steps leading to the front door? Like, a _lot_ of stairs.” Of course, Jay’s mind was unable to stop his mouth from spurting out the question about halfway through the climb.

“ It’s probably done that way to freak people out. Big, scary staircase leading up to ominous looking places. It’s enough to strike fear into the hearts of anyone stupid enough to actually climb them.” Kai smirked.

“ So does that mean you’re stupid for climbing up one such staircase leading to an ominous looking building?” Nya asked with a smirk of her own.

Instantly, Kai’s smirk disappeared from his face. It was not long replaced with the stuttered attempts at trying to regain his composure. And to follow it up, everyone broke into laughter, successfully breaking the tension that had been surrounding them.

But things got serious again once they reached the door to the lighthouse.

“ Guys wait.” Nya called, effectively stopping Zane from knocking on the door. “ There’s something we forgot to tell you about Echo.”

Zane turned back to face the water ninja. “ What is it, Nya?”

“ Echo is quite shy around new people. So, take it easy and let him come to us.”

“ Or at least wait until we get some sort of sign that tells us he wants to find out more about us. Whichever comes first.” Jay added, starting to feel nervous about the upcoming meeting again.

“ Of course.” The master of ice nodded.

With that, Zane turned back to the door and knocked. The ninja waited in silence for any movement beyond the wooden door, but no sound could be heard from within. No shuffling of feet or clanging of metal. Nothing. Half the team were starting to get a little worried that no one would be able to get to the door let alone be courageous enough to actually open said door.

Zane knocked again, pushing down the fear and concern that was starting to build within him… or at least trying to. Just like before, though, no sound could be heard except for the cawing of seagulls and the crashing of the waves against the shore and the yacht. And the silence was starting to get even more concerning. Finally, before Zane could knock for a third time, Kai took matters into his own hands and opened the door with some good old-fashioned lockpicking skills.

The space beyond was still stacked with boxes as if it hadn’t been touched during the years it had apparently been abandoned. But there were tell-tale signs that someone was still living within the prison walls. The place was clean, for starters. Well… mostly clean. All the boxes were free of dust and the floor and stairs were swept to the best of one’s ability despite the odd rusty patch that appeared to be marked into the floorboards.

Subconsciously, Nya and Jay turned to look at the lone switch on the far wall they knew led to the hidden basement. Not only was that they way to where Echo Zane most likely was at that very moment, but it was also where they gave their last stand. It was where Nya threw Jay into that portal to save his last wish not long before she, herself, was taken, fighting, to the worst days of her life. But they didn’t have time to reminisce as the others began to make their way up the stairs to the main room of the lighthouse.

Just like the entranceway, the main room of the lighthouse looked like nothing had been changed since Dr Julien had been there, save for the cleanliness of the place. But it was also a sad looking place. The table was bare and a lot of blueprints that the good doctor had deemed worthy enough for anyone to witness were now missing. Even the lone metal flower by the doctor’s bed seemed to have aged and rusted in the absence of proper care.

Of course, some of the things that were missing, like the laundry, had been packed away and taken with them when they had rescued Dr Julien. And despite the various cogs and wheels that lined the walls, it felt extremely empty because of it. But there were scorch marks on the roof and walls and in the centre of the room that were impossible to miss.

Kai knelt down by the burn on the ground, tracing lightly over part of the edge as if to ascertain what had happened and when just from that motion. Around him, the others started to settle in, also examining smaller burn marks or starting to prepare breakfast in Lloyd’s case. Even Dr Julien’s Tai-D Bot had emerged to help ‘clean’ the ‘mess’ that Lloyd was making, scaring Cole who had nearly stepped on him as well as proving that he had survived the trip through time and the battle with the pirates.

“ What happened here?” the master of fire asked.

Jay turned away, refusing to say anything more about what had happened. He knew they were coming to the end of the story. He knew they were getting to the part where the love of his life, Kai’s little sister, had died in his arms. And he dreaded telling that part of the story just as much as he dreaded telling the others about what had happened to him on the pirate ship.

Nya took one look at her boyfriend and knew right there and then that she would have to continue with the story herself.

“ Remember how Jay said that he and I were locked in a room together with a map?” She started.

“ Yeah.”

“ Well, while we were in that room, we figured out where we were going to hide. In this very lighthouse… where we thought no one could find us. While we were hiding, we met Echo. But it was during that time that Nadakhan somehow discovered where we were. It wasn’t long after that that the pirates showed up and they threw exploding barrels at us. That’s where the scorch marks came from. Apparently, the renewed timeline didn’t fix everything.”

“ Wait a minute. They threw exploding barrels at my sister?!” Kai roared, going back into protective brother mode.

“ And friend!” Jay corrected. “ They threw exploding barrels at your friend! Twice! The first time being to separate said friend from _you_ which got you captured because you were alone with that stupid djinn like you weren’t supposed to be because I was stupid enough to actually keep my big mouth shut at the worst possible time because if I had just opened my stupid mouth, none of this would have happened. No! If I had just listened to Zane, then I wouldn’t have tried to make any wishes which means this entire mess wouldn’t have happened in the first place. No, even better, we never should have gone to the hospital. We should have just gone straight after Clouse. Then no one would have been able to unlock that stupid teapot and none of this would have ever happened and we all would have been safe from the get go and no one would have had to die!”

Jay heaved a sigh and turned to look out the window he had positioned himself beside. He didn’t want the others to see the tears forming in his eyes at the thought. In fact, he didn’t want to tell or even hear any more of the story. He wanted to forget it. The only problem was, his mind wasn’t letting him forget.

Yet, at the same time, something inside of him wanted to hear the story out. It was telling him that his friends were trying to help him, trying to make him understand that the best way they could help was by understanding where the pain was coming from. And because of that small part of his brain, he couldn’t say anything or do anything to stop the story from ending early. They’d gotten this far into it after all.

“ I’m sorry.” He sighed after a few minutes of stunned silence.

“ No.” Nya soothed. “ I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed. This is my fault.”

“ Nya, if my brain wasn’t as messed-up as it is, things would be so much easier. And yes, I accept the fact that I have a messed-up brain, okay. No one else needs to say anything on the matter.”

“ No one else?” Kai questioned quietly.

“ Jay, your brain is not messed up.” Cole tried to steer his best friend from his negative thoughts.

“ Isn’t is, Cole? What about all the times I panic and fret over absolutely nothing? What about when my mouth decides it’s just going to splurt all my inner most feelings out to complete strangers? What about all the whacked-out things it wants my hands to create. What about all the times I freak over a simple word or name and freeze so badly my body goes on autopilot while my mind is in another timeline entirely, having nightmares about what I had witnessed and the torture I had gone through? Does none of that prove that my mind’s messed up?” Jay all but growled before lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “ Does that not prove that I’m weak?”

Of course, Nya had to be standing right next to her boyfriend when he had said that and so had managed to hear his whispered words. And once she did, she had no qualms about hitting him on the shoulder for even thinking such things. The sudden act of violence made the blue ninja turn to face her with a look of shock on his face and a silver tear caught in the act of streaming down his cheek.

“ Don’t you ever say that you’re weak again, do you hear me?” the water ninja growled herself.

“ Butt…”

“ No butts! You are not weak, you got that! You know yourself that your lightning can reach up to 1.21 gigawatts of power. We tested it, remember. And your technological prowess is one of the best there is. Your speed is amazing and that includes your reaction time when fighting, not to mention you’re an amazing fighter both in games and, more importantly, in real life. You defeated Nadakhan. You endured everything he threw at you and survived it, going back later with your own team under your command to defeat him. You are not weak. And don’t you let anybody tell you otherwise.”

“ There may be times where we either ignore you or worry about you when you panic a lot, even as we attempt to calm you down, but there are times when we actually like it when you talk so avidly about something. Especially when we see the joy on your face when you talk about what you love.” Zane added, also in a soothing tone.

“ Even if we don’t understand what you’re saying half the time.” Kai smirked. “ I mean, I don’t understand Cole and his cake tangents or his art stuff. And you know I almost have heart attacks when it comes to looking out for Lloyd and Nya regardless of what they think about it.”

“ That’s fine with me, because I have absolutely no idea how you can do that blacksmithing stuff that you do.” Cole admitted, unknowingly taking focus off of Jay a little.

“ Or how you can use so much hair gel in one sitting.” Lloyd added as he managed to save the milk from being chucked back into the cooler curtesy of Tai-D.

Kai glared at both of them in response, though it was mainly directed at the green ninja who merely returned his smirk. Though, Tai-D was also glaring at Lloyd for interfering with its clean up duties… that is, once it realised that the milk was once more in Lloyd’s grasp.

Zane merely nodded along with what was being said before continuing with what he had been saying. “ And need I remind you about how you could not understand how I did things when we were all starting out as ninja? Or even how I could not understand you and how jokes and sarcasm worked?”

“ Jay, none of us are perfect. We all have our quirks.” Nya admitted, her voice now a more soothing tone. “ But we love your inventions and the way you can make them out of pretty much anything you can get your hands on. Your mind is perfect for you. We just want to help you find yourself amongst the pain that Nadakhan caused.”

Still, Jay refused to look at his family. “ It’s that pain which is messing up my mind.”

“ Then help us help you, brother.” Zane pleaded, making his way to Jay’s other side. “ Tell us of the pain so that we can help you accept what has happened and help clear your mind of the stress it believes it is still in. Help us help you to realise there is no more danger to come from the events that have previously occurred.”


	16. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. I hope you have all enjoyed reading Revealing The Pain

Jay sat on the steps leading to the lighthouse looking over the Endless Sea and occasionally up at the clouds that passed by, his mind even more clouded than the sky with thoughts. It was just after lunch time and he had had enough of failing at chess against Zane… and cards against Lloyd. If there was one thing he was sure about, though, it was that Lloyd had one heck of a poker face on him. He wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but it probably had something to do with Darkley’s.

But his mind had been drifting through various subjects for quite some time now, even through the games (which was probably why he was losing so easily), and he knew the others could tell. That led to another problem.

The other ninja were all acting cautiously around him like he was some kind of delicate piece of china or something, clearly trying not to upset him any further. And, of course, he blamed himself for that. They wouldn’t be acting the way they were if he hadn’t had scared them with his outburst that morning. Things would be different if he hadn’t been so scared.

To be honest, Jay wasn’t quite sure if he managed to sneak away from his teammates on his own or if they had let him sneak away. Because his mind was lost so deeply in thought, he honestly hadn’t taken much notice of what was going on around him. He didn’t even know how he made it down the stairs in one piece. While he was in his daze, he had narrowly escaped tripping over Tai-D as the robot was going past dirty lunch dishes.

And then there were the voices of his friends echoing around in his head in between those thoughts; their words clearly saying that they were all there to help him.

How could he do it, though? The pain was deep… and Jay wasn’t talking about the physical pain which he knew would hinder his movements at times during battle. How did one ease away painful thoughts and memories? How could you stop the smooth, accented voice of the enemy whispering darkness in your ear?

 _“ It’s all an act.”_ Nadakhan’s voice returned as if to prove his point. _“ Deep down, you’re scared. You know you’re weak. You make jokes to mask that you’re afraid.”_

Okay, so he was afraid. Jay was afraid that Nadakhan would return. He was afraid that Nya was going to die in his arms again. He was afraid that he was going to lose his brothers and be alone again. And he didn’t want to be alone. Being raised in a junkyard meant he had no friends his own age, meant that he was alone… and he didn’t want to go back to that.

Or back to when he had thought that Zane was lost forever thanks to him sacrificing himself to defeat the Overlord.

Jay didn’t want to lose Kai or Lloyd or Nya again like he had when he split away from ninja life. He didn’t want to lose his best friend again like he had when the two of them were fighting. Thinking back, that was painful to go through. The useless anger and the loneliness despite being around others… he didn’t want to have to feel that again because he refused to let Cole feel the pain he was currently in.

 _But you’re hurting him right now._ The little voice in the back of his head argued. _You’re hurting all of them by keeping this pain bottled up inside you. You’re hurting yourself._

It was a weird conundrum that his mind kept coming to as it drifted through sea and sky. He didn’t want the others to feel burdened by his pain, but he knew that each one of the other ninja were worrying over him because of that very pain. And, whenever he did break and reveal parts of what had happened, they pined for him anyway. They acted as if they were the ones who were hurt and not their blue ninja. So he’d try and protect them by keeping the pain locked away and the vicious cycle would continue.

Yet Zane had offered to help sort things out. All of them had. Jay just had to finish the story. In fact, that was all they were waiting on. Nya had told everyone at lunch time what had happened to her after she threw Jay into the portal. And despite being furious that some creep had essentially married his sister, Kai was also questioning who was on this team that Jay had formed in their absence.

So, did he tell them about the final battle? Did he tell them what had happened to make him say his last wish?

 _“ You will know when the time is right to tell the others of this story.”_ Master Wu’s words echoed around Jay’s confused skull, somehow drowning out the cacophony that was already making its home in there.

That’s when Jay found himself closing his eyes to the world and blocking out everything. That is, everything except the crashing of waves against the shore. He found himself focussing on that one sound, lulling him into his meditative state. He focussed on his breathing, slowing it down until it was so deep he barely moved at all because of it.

 _“ Clear your mind. Rest your soul. Only then will you find the answer that you seek, Jay Walker.”_ An earlier memory of meditation with Master Wu entered the peace.

Then another voice entered his mind, one he remembered hearing from a movie he once watched a long time ago. _“ Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”_

But if his fear was Nadakhan, why couldn’t he banish it already? Maybe the others could help him figure out what he needed to do to banish the fear. Of course, they’d need to know the rest of the story. With the deepest breath he could muster, Jay opened his eyes and gave himself an encouraging nod.

It was time to finish the story.

He just never realised he had received company while he was meditating until he went to get up and head back inside.

“ Welcome back.” Cole’s voice was quick to bring his friend back to the present.

“ Gah!” was the reply the black ninja got seconds before Jay began trying to settle his now racing heart.

“ Woah, whoops, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“ Cole! You should know better than to go scaring people while they’re in meditation.”

“ Sorry.”

Cole couldn’t help but wince through his apologies. He hadn’t meant to scare Jay. He had just been worried about him and was trying to keep him company. He honestly hadn’t realised his best friend had been meditating until after he had sat down next to him. And by that time he couldn’t just get back up again in case he did accidentally disturb the meditation.

Thankfully he hadn’t have had to wait long before Jay woke himself up.

“ Okay, so… why are you here?” Jay asked after taking yet another deep breath.

“ You looked lonely.” Cole admitted. Jay continued to look at him as if waiting for more information. “ And I lost to Lloyd. I now owe him three bags of candy when we get back to Ninjago. And not the cheap kind either.”

“ Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.”

“ Do you even remember that you also owe him three bags of candy?”

“ I do?”

“ You do. We know you’ve been… thinking hard, so he let you off easy. He was planning on getting some Fritz Donnegan stuff off you.”

Jay shook his head, a small smile creeping onto his face as he did so. Of course Lloyd would try and claim Starfarer merchandise off of him… especially now that the boy knew his friend was actually the son of the guy who played Fritz Donnegan. And of course said friend’s mind would be too clouded to remember it. But Jay was glad the stakes had been changed because there was no way he was going to give any on his inheritance to the boy.

“ So, we have to get some of the really good candy for the green ninja.” The lightning ninja confirmed. “ How much does Kai owe him?”

Cole shook his head. “ As far as I know, nothing. When I came downstairs, Kai was still trying to best Zane in chess… and failing epically.”

The laughter that reached Cole’s ears at that made his heart soar. Just that morning he had wondered if he was ever going to hear that laughter again, if he was ever going to see Jay smile again after everything he had been through. But now, he was seeing a sliver of the old Jay back again, holding his hand out to him. And he loved it. The black ninja welcomed his friend back with a bright smile as he took the proffered hand and was helped to his feet.

“ Let’s go see how mad Kai is now.” Jay suggested once Cole was on his feet. “ And maybe we can get some more story time in.”

Cole blinked, hesitating for a second. “ Are you sure?”

“ Yeah. I think I’m ready. Besides, I think we’re worrying Echo because he can’t keep an eye on us and an eye on the others at the same time.”

As if to prove his point, Jay glanced at the nearest window just in time to see a blur of rusted copper colours dash out of sight. Cole looked at his friend with a confused expression firmly planted on his face before following his gaze in an attempt to catch a glimpse of this elusive new friend that Jay and Nya were talking about. But Echo Zane had already disappeared into the depths of the lighthouse and was probably hiding behind a stack of boxes or something once more.

Still, the smile never faltered from Jay’s face. He knew that they would find Echo soon. They weren’t leaving the lighthouse without him… or Tai-D, because they were definitely not going to break up that friendship. Heck, Echo Zane might even help them a little like he had when it was just him and Nya at the lighthouse. But, he knew that he would prefer to finish telling the story of the alternate timeline before he went in search of the rusty android.

Cole followed behind silently, looking around the ground floor for any signs of Echo Zane. He didn’t find anything except for maybe a new spot of rust by one of the stacks of boxes, though. But he did notice how some of the stones on the far wall didn’t seem to match up as easily as first thought to the rest of the wall. And the fact that there was some sort of lever nearby that seemed to match in colour to the wall itself was also a big clue.

It was almost like there was a hidden room in the lighthouse, possibly leading to a basement or workroom that hadn’t been noticeable the first time they had visited. And it was most likely that Echo was hiding there. But when Jay didn’t mention anything about a hidden room, he knew he couldn’t say anything on the matter himself. And, if he remembered correctly, Nya hadn’t mentioned anything about a secret room either.

Yet, Jay kept glancing in the direction of the false wall with a knowing smile on his face… and that pretty much cemented the fact that there was a secret room in the lighthouse. Even so, the black ninja respected Jay’s wishes to keep silent on the matter, knowing that his friend would explain things when he felt the time was right. The remaining climb to the main room was instead filled with a comfortable silence until the two got close enough to the trap door.

“ Perhaps it would be wise to call it a day and pack away the chess board?” Zane’s voice reached their ears just as Jay was about to open the door.

“ But I haven’t beaten you yet.” Kai argued.

“ Kai, you have not been able to beat me for years. Though, I admit you have been getting better. It’s just, everyone needs a break every now and then. Even me.”

Judging by Zane’s choice of words and the slightly crazed look in Kai’s eyes as he glared at the chess board, Kai had not won a single match against the master of ice. And that meant that the rest of the team had to watch what they said around the fire master if they wanted their lives spared… or at least wanted to remain in one piece. It also made Jay wonder if he should continue with his story now or wait a little bit longer to tell it.

“ _Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today.”_ And, just like that, Master Wu’s favourite saying had entered the blue ninja’s mind, almost as if the old master was with them and brandishing his bamboo stick.

Nya was the first to notice the new arrivals and raised her hand in greeting as she made her way over to Jay and Cole.

“ Jay, you alright?” She asked once she was by her boyfriend’s side.

“ Yeah.” Jay replied with a nod of his head. “ Just needed to get some air. And apparently get spooked by Cole.”

Cole gave a huff at that response. “ Hey, I said I was sorry.”

“ I know.”

“ What did you do this time, Cole?” Kai asked, his anger managing to die down a little already.

“ Nothing, I swear.” The black ninja replied.

Jay, still smiling, could only clasp his hand over his friend’s shoulder. “ He tells the truth. Technically, it was my fault. I didn’t realise he was there until he said ‘hi’. But I got a lot of thinking done before hand.”

“ Quick question; should we be worried?” Lloyd asked from where he sat shuffling the deck of cards in his hand.

“ To be honest, I’m not quite sure. As usual, my head is messed up. I mean, it’s so clouded in there I can’t even figure out what components I’d need to make a new alarm system. But somehow I managed to figure out what I needed to do.”

“ And that would be?” Kai asked, voicing what was on everyone’s minds.

“ I need to finish the story.”

The silence that filled the room was deafening. Each one of the ninja all looked at Jay with unanswered questions dancing around in their eyes. Even Tai-D stopped what it was doing and looked up at Jay, a white rook piece in its grasp as it packed up the chess board for Zane and Kai. Not one of them knew what to say. But amongst the confusion and apprehension they all felt, there was a hint of curiosity and pride at the fact that Jay was willing to explain things again.

Jay just turned around and made his way to the window that he had previously occupied that morning. To be honest, he had no idea how he was going to start. He remembered Nya telling the others where they ended up after being locked in a room at the Police Station and that he practically exploded at Kai afterwards. And he knew Nya had told her side of what happened after she threw him into the portal. But how did he continue from that?

“ Where to start…” he said, mostly to himself. “ Well, you guys know that we came here after Nya and I figured out where we would go to hide. And you know that we ended up being found and that Nadakhan captured Nya and forced her to marry him, the creep. I promise you, Nya, you will not have to wear any ballgowns ever again while I’m around. That is, if you don’t want to.

“ Anyway, after I was thrown into the portal, I landed back in the junkyard. I was a mess. Me being a mess now probably rivals me being a mess then. But my dad talked some sense into me and I managed to ‘scrap together a few friends to help me out in a jam’. And you will not believe who those friends were.”

In saying that, Jay turned around to reveal shining eyes and a dangerous smirk that made the others wonder what he had planned. And that look scared all of them. Especially in that moment.

“ Please don’t say Darreth. Please don’t say Darreth. Please don’t say Darreth.” Kai pleaded under his breath.

“ Funny you should say that, Kai.” Jay’s smirk seemed to gleam.

“ Oh no.”

“ You recruited Darreth, didn’t you?” Cole asked, already dreading the answer.

“ He was the first recruit to the Ninja Replacements.” The lightning master admitted.

Kai couldn’t help his hand making its way to his forehead at the news. “ Please tell me how we managed to win.”

“ And why you called them the Ninja Replacements.” Cole added.

This time, Jay’s expression turned to one of slight embarrassment. “ To be honest, it was the first thing that came to mind. You guys were all out of commission and I am a ninja despite everything, not to mention a ninja doesn’t work alone. It just came out. As for winning, I used my last wish, didn’t I. it’s why you can’t remember anything.

“ But you’ll be glad to know that Darreth wasn’t the only member of the Ninja Replacements. Oh man, you’re going to love who I went to next.”

“ Dare I ask?” Kai sighed.

“ It was Soto.”

“ _What!?”_ A number of voices called out in shock, scaring away the seagulls that had tried to roost for the night.

“ But Soto’s the enemy.” Lloyd was struggling to comprehend what Jay was saying.

It was Zane who spoke next, though. “ Am I right in assuming Soto was chosen due to his knowledge of Djinns?”

“ Well, yeah.” Jay nodded.

It still took a minute for it all to sink in. Not only had Jay recruited Darreth, who was hopeless at pretty much everything he did, but he’d also recruited a previous enemy in Soto. Not to mention no one had any idea if the old pirate would be a repeat offender if he was released from prison. The other ninja could think of so many other, better people to recruit. People like the other elemental masters.

Jay seemed to realise what they were all thinking, though, because he just shook his head. He had spent a good few hours looking around Ninjago City and its surrounding areas (he hadn’t had time to go much further out) for any elemental masters that could help his cause. Sadly, all he found was that most of them had been captured by the sky pirates. There had only been one elemental master that he had been successful in finding.

“ I know what you’re thinking.” He said, raising his hands to placate his friends. “ Why not go to the elemental masters? I’ll tell you why. Almost all the elemental masters in Ninjago City were captured by Nadakhan. The only one who hadn’t been captured, besides myself, was Skylor. And she was more than ready to close up shop for a little while and come help save Ninjago and crash a wedding once she knew what was going on.”

“ Okay, so why didn’t you go to Skylor first?” Kai asked, still clearly irked by Darreth and Soto being on the team.

“ Because Darreth and Soto were closer. The furthest I had to go was back here to the lighthouse to get Echo Zane. Not to mention he was more than willing to protect Ninjago and help save Nya. The final members of the team were Ronin and the Police Commissioner. They kind of came as a package deal.”

“ In other words, Ronin was getting arrested by the Commissioner.” Lloyd guessed.

“ Yeah.”

“ Why not?” Kai sighed, making his way over to the nearest seat. “ Jay, you really need to pick better members next time. I mean, Skylor, I can understand. Echo Zane… well, I’d have to meet him first. I’m not so sure on the Commissioner being part of the team. He has his own job after all. But Soto and Ronin? And Darreth? I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to be replaced by Darreth.”

“ It was all I could do on such short notice, okay!” The lightning ninja grumbled. “ Ninjago was literally falling apart and, aside from Nya, you were all stuck in a demon sword.”

“ Okay, I’ll give you that.”

Jay couldn’t help the thin line his mouth created or the hard look in his eyes at Kai’s antics. He had worked himself to the point where he thought he would never be able to move again – and that was including when he was getting beaten to near death by those stupid pirates. And because pirates took whatever they pleased, well…

“ I think I did a pretty good job leading them, actually. We came up with a plan to ride the next piece of land that was sent up to Djinjago because that was the only way to get up there what with the pirates having claimed the _Destiny’s Bounty_. And we managed to catch one of the pirates who were trying to spy on us as well. Although I did nearly miss the landmass chasing the other guy, but I got there. The Commissioner ended up staying behind to take the guy we did catch over to the prison cell.

“ When we got up there, I managed to avoid all the guards, because every man and his dog was guarding Nya, just so I could end up with the sword even though I was aiming for rescuing Nya. Granted I am grateful that you managed to get that creep to part with that stupid sword, Nya. Anyway, the Ninja Replacements and I, we gathered around the sword, talking about how to get you all out of there, when Soto came up with the solution… strike me down with it.”

Jay then turned to face Zane with a dead serious look on his face. Though he did notice the shine of bronze eyes against copper metal peeking through the trap door at them as he did so. Obviously, Echo Zane had gotten courageous again and was now trying to make out who these ‘intruders’ were once more. But the blue ninja ignored the hiding android in favour of continuing with his story before he got cold feet again.

“ Zane. How do I put this without being nasty?” He said. “ Your brother is very… simple. You tell him to do something and he will do it to the tee. He also tends to use his own body parts to fix something without regards to his own safety. On that note, he does fall apart easily. But his loyalty is just as powerful as yours, my friend. And he does okay intellectually, you’re just… more knowledgeable, being older and all. It’s just, when I gave him the sword and gave him the signal, he kind of misunderstood my use of the word when I used it a little later on. I was trying to explain something at the time, and he struck me down mid-sentence.”

“ What did you use? The word ‘now’?” Kai asked.

“ Actually, the word was ‘go’.”

“ Serves you right for using such a commonly used word.”

“ Don’t you talk! You were the first one to get sucked into the sword!”

Cole decided he had to do something before things escalated any further. He took a step to the side, easily placing himself between his two brothers, before putting his hands up in surrender.

“ Okay, okay. Let’s just settle down here.” He said, watching the fire and lightning ninja for any more hostilities between them.

Both Kai and Jay forced themselves to take a deep breath. There was no use getting worked up over the use of a single word. What had happened with said word was now just a part of a – rather horrific – story, after all. A story that sent Jay turning back to face the reddening sky beyond the lighthouse after taking a second, deep breath.

The lightning ninja hadn’t realised how close to night-time it was. It honestly felt like it was still mid-afternoon when he had started this part of the story. Heck, it felt like it was mid-afternoon now. But the sky told another story. And it almost seemed fitting to end the story as darkness fell. Almost because he knew the nightmares would plague his mind as he slept once he did finish.

“ Being in the sword itself was surprisingly distracting.” Jay forced himself to continue. “ It was working against you, trying to make you succumb to its magic, making you sleepy and trying to grow these weird crystals on you which make you even more sleepy. I think, the longer you were in there, the more crystals drained your powers or something. Anyway, I found you first, Kai, shook you awake and knocked the crystals off you, then we found Zane and Cole, followed by Lloyd, Misako and Wu. To make things worse, we had a time limit of, like, a few minutes or else we’d be trapped in there forever. I had to get in, find you all, and get out before that time limit was up. And, of course, Clouse was trapped in there and wanted out as well, trying to take advantage of that time limit, and caught a hold of my foot. That’s why I was out a little later than the rest of you. I almost didn’t make it out because that idiot was trying to drag me back into the sword. You’ll be pleased to know he got a foot to the chest. Two, actually. I… kind of used him as a springboard to get back up to the portal in time to get out of the demon sword. We were welcomed back by the Ninja Replacements amongst the ruins of a tool shed up in Djinjago.

“ After a quick catch up, I returned focus to crashing the wedding, because, you know, that was kind of important. So we split up. Us ninja went to go crash the wedding while Wu and Misako took the Ninja Replacements back to the city to evacuate it, or at least keep people safe, because once Nadakhan lost his power, Djinjago would crash into Ninjago. Thank you Lloyd for pointing that out in your old wisdom.”

“ Old?” Lloyd balked.

“ Yeah. One of your wishes was to be wise like your uncle. Somehow Nadakhan twisted it to make you grow old. And I mean old man with white hair and everything. You were surprisingly fit in your old age, though, managing to keep up with us younger ninja as we rushed to the temple of airjitsu and crash that wedding that that stupid Djinn succeeded in making us miss.”

“ You really hate this Djinn, don’t you.” Cole pointed out as Lloyd continued to try and understand why everyone wanted him to age so rapidly.

“ With a passion.”

The darkness in Jay’s eyes as he turned around and spoke those words sent chills down the spines of the other ninja. It reminded them all of the darkness in the eyes of every single enemy they had fought… and it scared them. Not to mention the destruction their friend had caused to the training grounds not long ago flashed in the minds of Cole, Kai and Lloyd at both the words and the sight before them. But, somehow, they all knew that the worse was yet to come.

“ So Nadakhan got his infinite wishes. I failed at making my last wish just as the creep spelled Nya into some sort of deep sleep. He then made one heck of a lot of clones of his ugly mug, oh and banished his own crew once they realised what was going on, and sent the clones to chase us away. But Clancee, a Serpentine member of the crew managed to tell me where the poison dart was before he was banished, and the two remaining crew members, Dogshanke and Flintlocke, they defected and joined our side.

“ It was with their help that we managed to get rid of the clones. You see, there were sky mines between us and the _Misfortune’s Keep_ where the poison was being kept. Live sky mines. We airjitsued our way up to the ship and once we were all safely aboard, Dogshanke blew up the mines. Would it be wrong to say I enjoyed watching all those Nadakhan clones blow up?”

The other ninja didn’t know what to say to that. They honestly never realised Jay had such a sadistic side to him. Not to mention they weren’t sure if his Post Traumatic Stress was playing a part in it. They preferred to see their friend happy and smiling over some really bad sounding jokes. What they were seeing now was really starting to scare them. Especially seeing that Jay was now starting to get a glazed look in his eyes.

“ But through all this,” Jay continued, “ I learned something. Wishing for something won’t make it come true. If you really want something, you have to make it happen. We held all the power. Nadakhan just tried to mask that and use that power against us. I felt the dart with Flintlocke so he could make the shot. Then I rammed Nadakhan’s ship into the temple… and I think I enjoyed that a little, too. Like I said before, it was the temple of airjitsu. And I destroyed it. It was ghost free, but I liked destroying it as well as that accursed ship. That temple turned my best friend into a ghost… and the love of my life was unwillingly married to a way older than you think creep from a dead world.

“ That’s when the final battle began. We tried to dodge every attack the creep threw at us and we sent attacks of our own with Lloyd even managing to hit him. But we were annoying him as we tried to separate Nadakhan from the possessed body of Nya because that creep had gone and wished his old love’s spirit, the spirit of Dilara, into Nya while we were busy running from his clones and stealing his ship. The creep turned you all to gold statues and left me alone again. When Flintlocke finally took the shot, I thought I was going to die. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t die.”

The second Jay closed his eyes, his mind flooded with the memory of seeing that green spot on that accursed wedding dress that Nya had worn. His mind flooded with seeing Nya’s mind return just in time for her to… Jay’s back hit the wall and he slid down it until he was able to curl himself into a ball. He didn’t want to say what happened next. He didn’t want to remember.

But somehow, he pushed through. Even though he could feel the tears forming in his eyes and the world closing in on him again, he knew he had to push through and finish. The others had a right to know what had happened, after all. Especially Kai.

“ Nadakhan was hit… but so was Nya. She called my name, and everything stopped. She was falling, but I managed to catch her and held her in my arms. And tiger widow venom is fatal to humans. ‘ _Only one wish’._ Wish Nadakhan mortal, Nya dies. Wish Nya well, Nadakhan wins. I was the only one who could stop him. I had to make the wish. My last wish. But I didn’t want to lose Nya. Her last words… I remember them so clearly. They haunt my dreams. ‘ Guess it’s true. The greatest love stories do always end in tragedy’. Then she was gone. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. My mouth formed words, but I didn’t realise what they were until later. My last wish. The one that saved us all. The one that turned back time. The one that erased your memories. I wish you had taken my hand, and no one ever found that teapot in the first place.

“ Then we were back on the hospital rooftop. And Nya was alive and she remembered everything and I remembered everything and everyone else had no clue about what had happened. And the only reason why Nya remembered what had happened was because she had died before I made my last wish. I wasn’t… I remembered because it was my wish. I realise that now. But by the First Spinjitsu Master, I wish… no, I pray I had been able to forget. Forget the pain. Forget the loss and loneliness. Forget the death. But I can’t forget. I just can’t!”

And that’s when Jay broke down, everything bottled up inside since then emerging as wails and tears. He had finally hit rock bottom and there was nothing he could do to stop himself. Nya eased herself down beside her boyfriend and gently pulled him into a warm embrace, letting him cry into her chest while also letting him know that she was there for him. The other boys, not knowing what to do now that they were seeing Jay’s most vulnerable state, stepped away to give their friend the space he needed… and to comprehend what it was they had just been told.

Cole looked over the two lovers, noticing that Nya now had silent tears streaming down her own face as she whispered comforting words into Jay’s ear, before turning away to head over to the cooler. Perhaps there was something there for Jay to eat… if he wanted it. Lloyd just mulled things over in his head where he sat once more at the table. Zane tried to meld with the shadows, keeping an eye on his fellow ninja as well as their surroundings for any unwanted threats. They all wished they could do something but at the same time they all knew they could do nothing.

But Kai seemed to take it the hardest aside from Jay and Nya. He had come so close to losing his little sister, to failing at protecting her, and he owed it all to Jay for making sure that didn’t happen. Not to mention he had pretty much failed at protecting Jay himself. It was clear to the others that Kai was blaming himself for what had happened. After all, if he had just stayed with Jay instead of rushing off like he had been told he’d done, perhaps Jay wouldn’t be the way he was now.

It was these kinds of thoughts rushing through the fire ninja’s brain that forced a growl to erupt from his throat. Instantly, all attention was on him. But he couldn’t force himself to vocalise his internal feelings. He hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything to protect his family. He hated not knowing what to do to help Jay now. And, right now, he hated himself for not being able to vocalise that hatred.

Finally, after taking a deep breath to calm himself, Kai managed to look over to Jay and Nya with pleading eyes. “ What can we do to help you, Jay? What can _I_ do?”

“ J-j-just… Just be you, Kai.” Jay stuttered, somehow managing to calm himself after a few minutes. “ And make dinner. I like your spaghetti bolognaise.”

“ Do we even have all the ingredients?”

Cole checked the cooler. “ Apparently, we do. Including the spices.”

“ Then spaghetti it is. Hey, Gizmo, know where the pots are?” When the Tai-D bot didn’t respond, Kai went searching for it. “ Little Gizmo?”

He found the robot by the trap door, looking down at a pair of bronze eyes and holding something out. It looked like a can of oil. But that wasn’t what stopped Kai in his tracks. It was the pair of eyes which looked really worried and scared. And, as the fire ninja went to take a step towards the door, the eyes darted to him for a split second before dashing out of sight, quickly followed by the Tai-D bot still with the can in its grasp.

“ What the? Hey, wait!” Kai called, alerting the other ninja.

“ Is everything alright, Kai?” Zane asked, sounding worried.

“ I think I just saw your mysterious brother, Zane. And the gizmo went after him.”

Jay wiped his face clean and got to his feet before giving a shaky smile. “ Then let’s go meet him. And remember, he is shy.”

“ Are you sure?” Nya asked as gently as she could, also drying her face and getting up.

“ No time like the present. Besides, we can introduce him to food.”

With that all clear, the ninja made their way down the stairs in a rather calm fashion… even if it did confuse most of them. Both Kai and Cole wanted to rush down the stairs to stop the mysterious android with Zane still feeling a little unsure about the upcoming meeting and so opting to stay at the back of the group with Lloyd. But with Jay and Nya leading them down, they were all forced to keep the same pace.

Things got even more confusing once they reached the bottom of the steps. No one had gone outside since Jay and Cole had earlier that day as the lock on the door hadn’t been moved since then. And from what they could see as they were coming down the stairs, no one was hiding behind the boxes. So, where had Zane’s brother gone? And why was the Tai-D bot staring at the wall, holding the oil can like it was some sort of futuristic ray gun that could blast the wall to pieces?

“ There’s a hidden room, isn’t there?” Cole asked, looking between the expectant robot by the fake wall he had noticed earlier and the promised couple beside him.

For a reply, Nya gave the black ninja a knowing smile and pulled the camouflaged lever, revealing Cole’s theories to be true.

There was indeed a room behind the wall. A reasonably sized room filled with tools, gears and rolled up blueprints as well as unfinished projects lying about. Not to mention the room was home to even more boxes with similar contents to those in the main lobby area. But, just like the rest of the lighthouse, the room was practically spotless, with the only light coming from the porthole in the far wall, resting at sea level.

Then there was the Tai-D bot which wheeled itself into the room and over to the large bookshelf that made the room its home, practically shoving the oil can at the thing… or rather whatever was behind the bookshelf.

“ Um… why would Zane’s brother be hiding from us?” Kai asked.

“ Maybe he’s terrified of your hairstyle.” Cole Quipped.

“ More like he’s terrified of yours.”

“ You do remember us saying he’s shy, right?” Nya butted in before anything serious could happen between the two boys.

Clearly, they had forgotten, because both boys looked away with identical sheepish expressions on their faces. This left Nya to heave a sigh as if she should have known that would be the case. But before the water ninja could turn her attention to the hidden boy behind the bookshelf, Zane stepped forward.

“ Hello? You can come out. It’s safe. We are friends.” He said a little cautiously.

Slowly, cautiously, a copper form emerged from behind the bookshelf. He was similar to Zane in looks, clearly built by the same genius doctor, although his copper shell was rusted something fierce from the lack of care and the constant sea-spray hanging in the air. Unlike Zane, he had no access panel covering his internal workings, easily showing his windup, steam powered power source. He also seemed to be a little bit shorter in height than Zane was.

“ Hello there. My name is Zane,” the ice ninja introduced himself before he did those behind him, “ and this is Kai, Cole, Nya, Jay and Lloyd.”

Of course, this confused the copper android. “ But, I am Zane. Built to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

Zane could only smile. “ I, too, was built to protect others. We were built by the same man, an inventor by the name of Doctor Julien. Our father.”

“ Father?”

“ Yes. We are brothers.”

“ Brothers?”

“ Yes.”

For a few seconds, it seemed like Zane was fighting a losing battle trying to get through to this obviously younger version of himself. But then bronze eyes shone as the meaning behind the words was recognised within the younger’s processors. Not long after that, the copper android’s features seemed to ease away some of his confusion. True, he may have been a little naïve, but he honestly felt like he could trust these people, this nindroid, before him. And he liked the idea of having a brother.

“ Brothers.” He said again, trying out the word. “ But if you, brother, are Zane, and I am Zane…”

“ Do not fear. I believe I… no, we have a solution for that. We could give you a new name. Do you like the sound of the name Echo Zane?” The titanium ninja asked.

Again, the copper Zane tested out the words being given to him. “ Echo Zane. I think… I think I can get used to it. But I also like the sound of Echo.”

“ If you want, we could call you Echo sometimes as well.” Nya suggested with a smile and a slight wink towards Jay.

It was a clear sign to the lightning master that the gradual change in names was a much gentler way to differentiate the two nindroids than when they had first discovered Echo Zane. After all, back in the alternate timeline, they had essentially discussed the boy’s existence right in front of him. Granted, he didn’t seem to care at the time, but thinking back on it, it felt wrong to have done something like that.

“ I’d like that.” Echo’s smile seemed to widen at the suggestion. But, still, he turned to face Zane with confusion in his eyes. “ But what did you mean by ‘we’?”

Zane didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t thought that would need clarification. He had merely been trying to include the other ninja as it, essentially, had been their idea. Jay and Nya if he was being specific. Thankfully, Jay noticed his slight stumble and was there to help him out. The blue ninja stepped forward with a saddened expression on his face.

“ Sadly, your father died,” he started, knowing full well that what he said next would be a lie, “ but he told us about you. Or rather, he told Zane and Zane told us when he was still trying to understand everything that had happened. So, because you both have the same name, we threw out… I mean we talked about some name ideas to differentiate between the two of you when we were talking about the two of you. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get here until now because of our… um… our job.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jay could feel the confusion in the room as if it was a thick layer of dust settling all around him. And he knew it was stemming mostly from his fellow ninja as they tried to understand where this lie had suddenly come from. Even worse, he knew he was going to be lectured about lying as soon as the others got a chance to talk to him away from Echo’s curious ears.

But he didn’t want to have to explain the alternate timeline again anytime soon. The pain was still too raw within him. He barely managed to get through it the first time. And he was still recovering from telling the story. Maybe when he felt a little better, he could retell the story for Echo Zane to understand. If Echo went with them to the monastery… and if he questioned the lie.

Nya seemed to understand, though, as his eyes met hers when he turned around slightly, because the confusion in her eyes quickly melted into an understanding smile. The others were completely lost, however. Judging from the story they had just heard, they were pretty sure that Dr Julien had not mentioned anything about Echo Zane.

But all attention was lost on the matter when Jay’s words finally sunk into the copper android’s CPU.

“ Father is dead?” Echo asked softly.

“ Yes.” Zane replied with a sad nod. “ But he went peacefully, so no harm came to him. And he wanted you to be free of this place. He wanted you to experience the world beyond the lighthouse.”

“ Go out there? Where Father said not to go?”

“ There is no need to worry. I will be with you, brother. We all will. And we will make sure that no harm comes to you.”

“ But I am built to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

“ Then we can protect each other.”

Echo Zane fell silent for a few minutes. In thought, he looked around the hidden basement, taking in every little detail in his attempts to figure out what he should do. Then his eyes landed on the Tai-D bot still holding the oil can out to him.

“ What about Tai-D?” He asked, turning back to his brother.

Zane’s smile only widened. “ We can bring him with us if that is what you wish.”

“ Outside… beyond the lighthouse. I think… I think I’d like to join you, brother.” Echo smiled, holding his hand out.

The smile spread to all around, with Zane even embracing his newfound brother in an ecstatic hug. It was a happy moment to see the two brothers together. And the ninja couldn’t wait to meet their new friend more in depth now that he would be joining them.


End file.
